Rachel McAdams Goes Primal in Survival Thriller
DIRECTOR: SAM RAIMI/2026
Linda Liddle lives up to her name. She may be brilliant with numbers, but that hasn’t moved her out of the small cubicle she’s occupied for years. You get the sense that Linda (Rachel McAdams) shops the T.J. Maxx clearance rack exclusively, wearing most of her clothes a size up or two because she buys whatever is on sale. She’s the kind of supererogatory employee that companies build their bones on, and this job is her life. But the new CEO Bradley (Dylan O’Brien) has no intention of promoting her as his father promised—he only sees a gauche underling who forces her colleagues to work next through the odor of her tuna salad sandwich. Then the power dynamics flip: On a flight over the Pacific, their plane crashes, and they’re the only survivors. All of a sudden, Linda’s scrappy ingenuity is the only thing making their deserted island livable, while Bradley’s loafer-dress-coded lifestyle provides no resources.
Send Help is for those who have been wanting Rachel McAdams to make a sequel to Red Eye. McAdams has spent her career hopping across romantic dramas, zany comedies, action thrillers, auteur fare, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and 20 years after Mean Girls, it turns out she’s pretty good at every single one of them. This high-concept thriller (sprinkled with a dash of horror) is a two-hander, which means the concept lives and dies by the strengths of its leads. O’Brien is an excellent scene partner, but this is McAdams’s showcase, letting her show off her genre versatility. She’s just as convincing as a desk jockey accoutred in little red glasses and speaking in aphorisms as she is a wannabe Survivor competitor rejoicing at killing a wild boar.
She’s the draw in this latest entry of the Eat the Rich/Down With Corporations trend in popular media (see in the last year: Highest 2 Lowest, No Other Choice, and The Phoenician Scheme), but props also go to the tight script. Sure, it’s The Lord of the Flies meets Marxism 101, which means it will feel familiar to anyone who caught 2022’s Best Picture nominee Triangle of Sadness. But in the hands of Sam Raimi, this is the genre-forward proletariat uprising, more concerned with manipulating audience allegiance than that more literary version. Even when it’s clear he didn’t get the budget for better CGI, his sense of humor and ease with thrills means Send Help is just plain fun.
