The last time before this year that Sam Raimi directed a horror film was in 2009, with ‘Drag Me to Hell’, a return to his roots after the ‘Spider-Man’ trilogy and which remains, perhaps, his best film along with ‘Darkman’ and the ‘Evil Dead’ trilogy. After extensive work in the ‘Oz’ franchises and Marvel, he returns to the humor, suspense and violence of that marvel with this fantastic ‘Send Help‘you just landed on Disney+.
In it we will meet a shy and lonely woman (Rachel McAdams) who travels with her arrogant and insufferable boss on a flight that ends up having an accident and leaving them on a desert island in the Pacific. What begins as a survival story becomes an inversion of the work hierarchy: the person who knows how to survive in nature is not the same person who rules in the office. From there, a strange and hilarious mix of ‘Cast Away’ and ‘Misery’ that doesn’t cut corners either in the intensity of its most violent scenes or in the grotesque humor with which it portrays its protagonists.
The original idea for the film dates back to before the pandemic, when Raimi came across this script from the authors of ‘Freddy vs. Jason’. When COVID happened, cuts came to the industry, and the studio tried convince the director to reduce the budget and release it on platforms. Raimi wanted the production to reach theaters, so the project was presented to the former Fox, now owned by Disney.
In an especially profitable year for traditional horror films like ‘Sinners’ or ‘Weapons’, and for thrillers with a twist like the hit ‘The assistant‘, ‘Send Help’ is placed, as is usual for Raimi, in an intermediate and unclassifiable terrain. Extremely dark humor, a description of characters between social caricature and classic horror comics and a load of impossible plot twists for the enjoyment of those who think that plot coherence is for the weak when there is emotion and narrative pulse.
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings