Visionary director Sam Raimi making a film about two people stranded on an island sounds like a lot of fun. The director of Evil Dead creating another movie about people isolated, and the subsequent terror is something horror fans will be interested in. There are few directors better at crafting a storytelling narrative centered on isolation.

Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) works in the Planning and Strategy Department for a company that’s on the verge of a big merger. Linda is very good at her job but she’s extremely socially awkward and not well liked at work.  When her asshole boss, Bradley (Dylan O’Brien) doesn’t keep his late father’s promise to make Linda a VP, he says she can prove herself if she can fix a problem during the company trip to Bangkok.

During the trip, the private jet crashes leaving Linda and Bradley as the only survivors. When they find themselves trapped on an island in the middle of nowhere, Linda’s skills and crazy obsession with the show Survivor come in handy as the pair fights for survival and await rescue.

This survival horror comedy is a breath of fresh air. It’s incredibly funny and wildly entertaining. The two leads do an amazing job, but the star of this film is Rachel McAdams. It’s easy to imagine Dylan as an entitled asshole, but how quickly do we forget McAdams is an Academy Award Nominee (Spotlight), very good at comedy (Game Night), and excellent in horror (Red Eye). McAdams delivers as Linda at every turn. She performs the character’s transformation from a timid caterpillar to a vibrant butterfly perfectly. She navigates effortlessly between being a soft meek employee and being a borderline serial killer.

This wouldn’t be a Sam Raimi film if it wasn’t bloody. The boar hunting sequence is a delightfully bloody scene. It’s also a pivotal scene that shows what Linda is capable of and the audience is seeing the first glimpse of Linda shedding her former self. We learn in those moments Linda might not be the character we were introduced to at the begging of the film.

What makes this film delightful is how well it’s structured. It starts as a comedy about a woman trapped in a toxic office environment. Then it becomes a survival film, similar to Castaway, about people trapped on an island. Finally it’s starts to feel a bit like Misery. Dylan O’Brien nails his performance with his facial expressions as Bradley realizes he grossly underestimated his employee. The audience is witnessing a character trying to process being trapped with someone they dislike. In the third act, the film turns into a cat-and-mouse game and the reveals are incredible. Like a true magician, Raimi does a great job keeping the reveals hidden until absolutely necessary.

Send Help is one of best horror comedies in recent years. It’s funny and absolutely twisted in a way only Sam Raimi can do. The film is a reminder how great Raimi is at his craft and Rachel McAdams being one of Hollywood’s underrated actors. McAdams can do whatever is asked of her in front of a camera and that’s why the movie works so well.

Grade: B+