The Review: Send Help

Send Help 8/10

L suggested this movie after she spotted it on Hulu. I hadn't heard of this movie whatsoever and ended up really enjoying it. This lady named Linda Liddle is weird. In movies they have weird people who are quirky and such, but she is beyond that. Like, you wouldn't wanna be around her for long. She looks like she smells like whatever she ate. At work everyone ignores her. Her boss passes away and she was promised a promotion but is passed up for this asshat that takes credit for all her work. Her new boss is Bradley who is the son of the guy that passed away. She confronts him about this and he pretty much shits on her and tells her to stop eating her tuna sandwiches at her desk cause of smells. She walks to her car and cries.

Bradley is impressed by Linda's attitude in confronting him and invites her on the company trip to Bangkok with some other assholes. On the plane one of them finds an audition tape she filmed for Survivor and laughs at her. She sees them and deletes the work she was doing just as the plane experiences turbulence. The plane starts ripping apart. Coworkers start fighting one another and attacking Linda to get her seat. The plane crashes and Linda is in the middle of the ocean near a small island. The next morning Linda wakes up on a beach and finds Bradley with his leg all fucked up. She starts building shelter and gathering food and making tools. Bradley wakes up discovering they are the only two that survived and immediately begins acting like an asshole.

Linda gets tired of his attitude and leaves him him on the beach overnight suffering through wind, rain, and heat. Linda also has a knife. The fuck she get a nice knife and later chopsticks as L asked. She comes back and gives him food and water. He starts acting a little better towards her. Linda goes around the island (Bradley still has a bum leg) and finds a nice waterfall and spots a boat arriving. She says “Not yet” and hides from it. She also fights a boar which is an insane scene. Bradley starts to be able to walk so Linda takes him on a tour and tells him where not to go because of poison and such. She demonstrates some dangerous berries to him on her arm. One night she and Bradley start talking about their lives. Bradley says his parents sucked. Linda says she was once married to an abusive alcoholic. One night she gave him the car keys whereas she used to hide them. She also gave him his last drink. He ended up dying in a car crash.

Bradley ends up making a meal for Linda and she starts feeling dizzy. Bradley poisoned her food and drags a raft from the bushes he secretly built. He says fuck you to her and makes it to the water. His boat starts falling apart fairly quickly and he drowns seeing a vision of his fiancé. He wakes tied to a tree. Linda lets him know he used the wrong dosage to kill her and how he should have tied the knots on his escape boat. She feeds Bradley some food and he suddenly starts feeling off. She lets him know that he is paralyzed and can't feel anything. She starts cutting below his belt after removing his clothes and blood squirts. Turns out it was a rat but will be his balls next time.

One day while foraging another boat shows up and lands. Its fucking Zuri (Bradley's fiancé)! She is all happy to see Linda and asks about Bradley. Linda is panicking. No way in hell can she go back to regular life with Bradley talking about how she tortured him and how crazy she is. A guide is also there so Linda leads them above this dangerous cliff (one she was saved from by Bradley earlier). Zuri falls and as the guide tries to save her asking Linda for help we are back at the beach. Bradley knows something is wrong with her but she decides to just lay around for a day. Bradley goes to hunt alone for food and such and ends up seeing Zuri's hand sticking out the sand with her engagement ring on.

Bradley confronts Linda and she says that the death was an accident while Bradley is like, nah, you a murderer! They start fighting like crazy. He almost rips her eye out. She bites his finger and swallows the engagement ring. A chase ensues and Bradley stumbles upon a fucking beach house. So yeah. This is why Linda stayed clean looking and well fed and able to make such fancy looking meals. Bradley drinks water as Linda watches him on camera. She explains how she found the house, got inside, and disabled all the alarms. They once again fight and Bradley apologizes for everything and confesses that he loves Linda. Then he attacks her and takes the shotgun from her. She ends up overpowering him and kills him with a gold club.

We are shown her at a golf tournament being interviewed about surviving on an island for a year and her upcoming new self help book. I liked this movie but would have preferred is Linda stayed on the island forever or died in battle with Bradley. Bradley was a douche but not like Swimming With Sharks style where he needed to be tortured the way she did. I picked up on signs she was crazy pretty early. The way she was acting was less quirky and more “Gotta keep an eye on this woman.” Acting was good and Linda showed more range as an actress than I had seen from her in other movies. This was a very Sam Raimi movie in the best ways with music by Danny Elfman.

Rachel McAdams as Linda Liddle

Dylan O'Brien as Bradley Preston

Edyll Ismail as Zuri

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