When a great director recedes from helming feature films in favour of producing, making television or other pursuits (Quibi shorts for instance), it can be hard to know whether to barrack for a comeback or be hopeful they’ve had the good sense to quit while ahead. So it is with Sam Raimi and Send Help. On the one hand, Drag Me to Hell evidenced an ability to slip back in to original genre work after a sabbatical with relative success. On the other, 17 years have passed and the only two movies he’s manned since (Oz the Great and Powerful, the Doctor Strange sequel) aren’t firm grounds for confidence he’s still got the goods.

To get it out of the way upfront, there is thankfully no real cause for concern. Send Help is an energetic and worthwhile re-entry to the fold, and if Raimi wants to drop one of these at sporadic intervals over the next 20 years, let the man do it I say.

While Raimi penned Drag Me to Hell himself, here he’s working with a script from Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, the screenwriting team behind 2003’s extremely silly Freddy vs Jason, and the surprisingly good 2009 Friday the 13th remake. The setup is simple: Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) is a daggy office worker struggling to get ahead in a workplace dominated by traditional amounts of nepotism, cronyism and misogyny. Her former boss has promised her a promotion to vice president once he hands the reins over to his son Bradley (Dylan O’Brien).

Unfortunately for Linda, when her boss dies, Bradley is more interested in installing his frat brother to the role than honouring his late father’s pledge. Partly as a consolation prize and partly so she can train the new guy, Linda is invited along on a company trip to Bangkok. The private jet they’re travelling in goes down, leaving Linda and Bradley washed up on an island together as the only survivors. Linda is largely unscathed but Bradley has a broken leg, leaving him reliant on Linda for food, water and general survival.

There’s nothing inherently fresh about the scenario, but it turns out to be a strong platform for both Raimi’s bag of visual tricks, which in concert with his past collaborator Bill Pope (Spider-Man 2 and 3, Army of Darkness) are deployed to beautiful effect, and for the talents of McAdams and O’Brien. Raimi’s unique, cartoonish style is so distinctive you could pick any scene out of this movie as his, going in cold with no context. Facial expressions, body parts, sandwich ingredients, seem to thrum and pop on the screen. Even the CGI – while undeniably the shakiest part of the film aesthetically – is kept to a minimum and chaperoned skilfully by the filmmaking around it. Desert island movies can struggle with pacing but whenever it feels like the film’s at risk of losing momentum, it escalates satisfyingly.

McAdams has always been an excellent comic actor, but here she’s in especially good form, playing Linda as vulnerable but propelled ever-forward by an internal motor that doesn’t stop. There’s an impressive economy of storytelling to the way her survival abilities are introduced. O’Brien for his part has some of the best line delivery of the whole thing, nailing the uneasy balance between schadenfreude and pathos of someone used to being in full control of their charm, looks, physical ability and good fortune, now left at the mercy of someone they’ve been openly hostile to and don’t respect. They’re well supported by the balance of the cast in the early going, much of which are Australian (the majority of the film was shot in Sydney).

If there’s a complaint to be found, it’s in the final act where the film seems to lose a degree of trust in the audience and treads narrative territory arguably too close to other recent entries in the same genre. But even that can’t detract from what is an entertaining return to the fold from Raimi.

 

Send Help opened yesterday in Australian cinemas.