No. I am not telling you personally to send help. I'm fine. This is about the movie Send Help starring Rachel McAdams and Dylan O'Brien.
Surprisingly, I liked this movie more than I thought I would. My wife and daughter suggested it. Although I had very little interest, that seemed like a good reason to at least check it out.
The movie is not really scary or funny.... but somehow it was compelling. For 90% of the movie, there are only two characters and yet the writer Damian Shannon and director Sam Rami found a way for there to be some tension at nearly all times. At first it seems like this is going to be a "revenge of the mistreated underling" story a la Swimming With Sharks... but this time with real sharks! Actually, as I wrote that last comparison, it hit me that this movie really is just Swimming With Sharks on an island with a man and a woman instead of two guys.
Actually, that is really all this is, a Swimming With Sharks ripoff set on the set of Survivor (whoa that is some meta shit right there). But shockingly it was a good ripoff. And the shout out to Survivor was the cherry on top for me.
I loved Swimming With Sharks but it was dark humor with "dark" in bold, underlined, italics and 96 font. That movie just makes you feel icky. There is only one redeeming human in the whole movie. But that is still one more redeeming humans than in all of Send Help. And I don't mean that in a bad way. Much of the tension of this movie is trying to figure out who the good guy is. Rami somehow stretched that bit out to keep me entertained for the last hour of the movie.
Send Help is about a mistreated middle manager, played by Rachel McAdams, at a huge company that has just been taken over by a douche-bag, portrayed by Dylan O'Brien, whose father just died and left business to him. As the douche-bag CEO and his douche-bag bros make fun of McAdams character while she looks on in horror, the small plane carrying them crashes. McAdams and O'Brien wash up on an island. If you are expecting this to be come The Blue Lagoon, then #1 you must not know who Sam Rami is and #2 you must be really old to remember The Blue Lagoon. It is billed as a dark comedy and it live sup to that name. Although it is dark, it is a slapstick comedy compared to Swimming With Sharks.
I honestly can't put my finger on it, but this movie was really compelling. There was a surprising amount of tension and mystery. I was really invested in the characters. But what I think was most fun for me was constantly switching who I was rooting for.
But a word of warning, this is Sam Rami so there is always going to be a couple of jump scares and some cartoonish, grotesque gore. Although I normally don't like gore and turn away from it, this was so cartoonish that I laughed more than was I grossed out.
