Why the Vicious Ending of Send Help Might Feel Familiar
Warning: This post contains spoilers for Send Help.
By the savage final act of the blood-soaked cinematic thrill ride that is Send Help, now in theaters, the relationship between nepo baby CEO Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien) and his long-suffering employee Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) has been turned so far inside out, the characters we were introduced to at the start of the battle-of-wills horror-comedy are pretty much unrecognizable.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]After getting marooned on a desert island when their private plane crashes somewhere in the Gulf of Thailand on the way to a business trip, the dynamic between the adversarial pair is quickly flipped on its head. Linda was already harboring a grudge against Bradley as he had passed her over for the VP position promised to her by his late father in favor of promoting one of his undeserving former frat brothers. But while slick C-Suite executive Bradley was in control in the real world, Linda, the woman he thought of as a mousy nuisance of a subordinate, turns out to be a self-trained survival expert with an unexpectedly vindictive nature. Here, Linda holds all the power. And she leverages it fully, forcing Bradley into submission as her (nearly quite literally) neutered companion.
Directed by horror legend Sam Raimi (The Evil Dead, Drag Me to Hell) from a script by screenwriting duo Damian Shannon and Mark Swift (Baywatch, Friday the 13th), Send Help has been touted as a combination of Misery and Castaway kicked into overdrive by Raimi’s signature gross-out gaggery. But the movie’s twist ending also bears some striking similarities to that of another recent buzzy social satire: Triangle of Sadness.
In writer-director Ruben Östlund’s 2022 Best Picture nominee, a small group of superyacht guests and crew members find themselves marooned on a remote island after a pirate attack sinks their luxury cruise ship. Isolated from society in a place where wealth and status mean nothing, the balance of power between the entitled ultra-rich and the one survivor who possesses any practical skills, overlooked toilet manager Abigail (Dolly de Leon), instantly shifts.
As time passes, Abigail evolves into a tyrannical leader, using her control over essential supplies to coerce her fellow survivors into obedience and establish a transactional barter system—even going so far as to exchange resources for sexual favors. One day, fashion model Yaya (Charlbi Dean) and Abigail decide to explore the island and discover their beach is actually adjacent to a luxury resort. Realizing civilization has been within reach all along, Yaya is thrilled and begins celebrating their imminent rescue. But she doesn’t realize that Abigail, who is apparently reluctant to give up her newfound privilege and return to normal life, is sneaking up behind her with a large rock. The movie ends on an intentionally ambiguous note, forcing viewers to make up their own minds as to whether Abigail went through with murdering Yaya in order to maintain her authority.
Send Help hits many of the same beats in Bradley and Linda’s dynamic. After weeks of subjugation at Linda’s hands, Bradley discovers that his fiancée and her boat guide had come to the island to rescue them—but Linda killed the pair to avoid returning to the real world. Then, Bradley makes his way to a part of the island Linda made him believe was impossible to reach where he finds a fully-stocked luxury mansion.
Bradley is desperate to escape his keeper’s clutches. Linda, on the other hand, is still not so keen on going home. Following a knock-down, drag-out brawl, Linda realizes Bradley’s overtures about living out their lives together on the island are insincere, and she beats him to death with a golf club.
The film ends by flashing forward to reveal Linda eventually built a raft, got herself rescued, and went on to fabricate a heroic story about her time stranded on the island as the plane crash’s lone survivor. She now lives a rich and entitled life, capitalizing off her reputation as a courageous and intrepid castaway to adopt the same insufferable, privileged persona she once loathed.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely, we guess.