Do you ever read a book, or see a movie, or attend a performance, and walk out thinking, “Yeah, that was pretty good.” But then over the next hours and days you keep thinking about it, and the more you think about it, the more you appreciate what you experienced. It’s almost better afterwards, in your memory, than it was in real time.
Send Help was that movie for me. Since the sad demise of the Dad’s Movie Club, I don’t get to our local Spectrum Theater as often, but I convinced Harriet to come along, despite her having heard there were horror genre elements in the movie, and jump-cut and gore stuff isn’t her thing.
But horror isn’t the only genre of Send Help: it’s also a comedy, a drama, and a social satire. It’s a horrosociadramedy.
The story in brief: The talented Rachel McAdams (I think so, ever since Mean Girls and Wedding Crashers) plays Linda Little, a socially cringey, aggressively cheerful, and extremely competent business analyst for a tech company now headed up by a new, toxic, and misogynistic CEO, Bradley, played by Dylan O’Brien in a fine performance.
Bradley passes over Linda for a promised promotion in favor of his close buddy, but throws Linda a bone by inviting her to present her analysis on an executive business trip to Thailand.
Now the movie gets going: dependence and revenge and trickery. Root for her. No, cheer for him. Not for either of them. Scary stuff, funny stuff, gross stuff. Send Help has it all.
In a crazy comedic-horror sequence, the corporate jet crashes at sea and only Linda and Bradley wash up alive on a tiny island. The roles reverse now because Bradley is injured and we’ve previously learned that Linda owns a wealth of wilderness survival skills.
And the big question remains: Will they get out of this alive?
Some of the most successful movies recently have been genre mashups. Barbie (comedy, fantasy, satire) and Sinners (period crime drama, horror, fantasy, musical) are two examples.
Part of the reason for genre mashups is that audiences have become more sophisticated: they crave more than standard genre fare and appreciate the complexity and instability of human emotions. The genre mashup is also less predictable than a film that stays within the lane of a single genre, and I find that interesting.
But there are downsides to the genre mashup: the tonal shifts throw the audience off balance, causing discomfort while experiencing the film. The story arc can feel more clever than it does inevitable. There were moments where I thought, Huh, why do it that way?
This might be why in the immediate aftermath of seeing the movie my impression was, I liked it. But the film stuck with me, and I continued to think about the inventive sequences, acting performances, bold approach, and just sheer entertainment. So, yes, go see Send Help. It’s a lot of fun.
