Send Help

Send Help is the newest Rachel McAdams film, also starring Dylan O’ Brian. We have talked about my love for Rachel McAdams, I will watch just about anything she is in. And all I knew going into this movie was that Rachel McAdams played a Survivor enthusiast who actually gets stranded on an island. Now as someone who is both in love with Rachel McAdams and obsessed with Survivor, I was very excited to see this one.

Right off the top I sort of hate the making gorgeous actresses “ugly” trope. I’ve talked about this extensively and I think even outside of romantic comedies this trope is extremely problematic. It inherently states that women who aren’t stereotypically attractive have less value. Despite her character being exceptional at her job, and incredibly loyal to her company, that doesn’t matter because she isn’t pretty. And that will never be an okay or acceptable statement for a film to make.

The narrative is surprising. I often see plot points coming but damn, I was surprised every 20 minutes or so with this movie. It seems at the very beginning of them being stranded that the narrative was setting up the two of them falling in love, which of course is not how it turned out. And then we have the fact that sort of as the characters were unraveling as did the narrative. As the characters lost their minds, the narrative lost its adherence to typical structure, twists and such.

Send Help was also way more gorey then I was ready for it to be. There was nothing in any of the trailers that really even alluded to just how gross the film is. We had a scene with her vomiting into his mouth, there was a lot of blood spurting, it was just a lot if that is not something that you are expecting.

There were also several shots that made it clear that this film was shot for 3D. So the problem I have really is why? Why are we shooting regular films in 3D. 3D is for movies like Avatar whose only selling point is its visuals. But for a horror/comedy? It’s a waste of time and resources because not only will MOST people not be watching it in 3D but that also means a majority of your audience now has to watch your film have goofy ass shots because you shot in 3D for no reason. It took me out of the narrative a few times.

The ending was the biggest surprise BUT it was consistent with the narrative. It looked like she was going to die or they were going to end up killing each other. But Linda lives and she goes back home and builds a better life for herself after being the “sole survivor” of the plane crash. I loved this because the entire movie Linda was clearly the more competent one. This man could not survive on his own, he tried several times and was shown to be a failure over and over again. Linda being the one that survives was quite frankly the only thing that would have made any sense. So I appreciate the consistency in the writing.

The movie as a whole however…it was a movie. It was certainly a movie. It wasn’t terrible because I think if you cast Rachel McAdams you guarantee yourself a 6/10 minimum. Because she is such a good actress that it truly doesn’t matter how bad the story is, or how bad the writing is, she will carry it. Now the writing itself wasn’t bad. The narrative was fine, the dialogue was great. It just felt like we maybe could have cut some things out without changing any of the actual story and it would have been better.