SEND HELP

Here's the short answer: no, and it's not close. SEND HELP is genuinely well-made — a taut, gory cat-and-mouse thriller anchored by two strong performances. Director Sam Raimi returns to the bloody, kinetic style that made his name, and the craft is real.

But craft isn't the question. This is a movie soaked in revenge, deception, and mutual cruelty, dressed up with copious blood, dismemberment, dozens of harsh obscenities, and partial nudity. The two leads occasionally try to cooperate — and the film makes sure they fail. What's left is a story that finds no way out of its own darkness, delivered in a package too skillful to dismiss and too corrosive to endorse.

If you're looking for a well-crafted thriller, this is one. If you're looking for anything your conscience or your family can sit with afterward, it isn't. Skip it.

Linda Little is a hard-working, awkward corporate strategist who's just watched a promised promotion get handed to someone else — by Bradley Preston, her new boss and the old boss's son, who barely hides his contempt for her. When Bradley drags her along on a business trip she never wanted to take, a plane crash leaves the two of them stranded together on a deserted island. Linda knows how to survive. Bradley knows how to give orders. That mismatch is where the story begins.

Four stars means this is genuinely excellent filmmaking, and the source is clear that Raimi delivers exactly what fans of his style expect: fast pacing, unapologetic gore, and effects-driven spectacle built on a reported $40 million budget. The visuals never overwhelm the performances — Rachel McAdams is called phenomenal as an awkward woman who gradually reveals just how in control she is, and Dylan O'Brien is praised for balancing a man torn between demanding leadership and needing rescue. The cat-and-mouse structure keeps tension high throughout.

The one soft spot noted is the ending — described as twisty in a way that may leave some viewers dissatisfied. Otherwise, this is confident, well-executed work from a director in his element.

SEND HELP exalts cleverness and self-preservation, not virtue. Its two leads spend the film locked in mutual mistreatment: a boss who treats an employee with real disgust, and an employee who, once she gains the upper hand, enjoys and exploits his dependence on her. They attempt cooperation more than once — and the film lets that cooperation collapse every time. Threaded through it all are strong strands of feminism and environmentalism, but the dominant current is something bleaker: a strong, dark, humanist, nihilistic worldview that offers no way out of the cycle it depicts.

That's the real cost here. A story about two people stranded together could have been about grace under pressure, or the discovery of each other's worth. Instead, it becomes a story about revenge answered with revenge, deception answered with deception — and no one, in the end, redeemed.

Scripture answers that cycle directly: "Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God" (Romans 12:19). The film can show us what mutual cruelty looks like on a deserted island. It can't show us the way out of it.

Sam Raimi and his cast have made a sharp, gory, well-acted thriller — and also a movie built on revenge, mistreatment, and a worldview with no light at the end of it. Craft this good deserves an honest verdict, and here it is, unchanged: skip it. Looking for something to watch with the family instead? Start here:.