Send Help is not, I repeat NOT, a horror movie. It is a thriller. I thought we would check it out anyway because Sam Raimi of Evil Dead fame directed it. In all honesty, Raimi has been shying away from the horror genre only dabbling in it after the Evil Dead series with Drag Me to Hell and some would say Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness. He is mostly been producing not directing.
Send Help is a female empowerment fantasy, pure and simple. Saying Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) is a small cog in a big machine is an understatement. In her job as corporate strategist she is overlooked, disregarded and often the butt of jokes by the office staff. They mock her smelly tuna fish sandwiches and her attempts to fit in. She is hanging onto that proverbial “totem pole” by her very fingernails. Her new boss Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien) is a pompous asshole who not only constantly belittles and demeans her but he gives the promotion she worked hard for and was promised to her by the former boss, to someone else.
The tables are turned though when Linda and Bradley are the only survivors of a plane crash. They both wash up on a deserted island but Bradley has injured his leg and cannot walk. A fan of the TV show Survivor, Linda takes charge much to Bradley’s dismay by starting a fire, building a shelter and finding food. But, there is only room for one alpha and it isn’t long before they are trying to permanently vote each other off the island.
Although there are a few surprising twists and turns, Send Help is fairly predictable, unspooling like clockwork, especially the BIG surprise during the finale. The more we learn about Linda, the more we realize that her machete isn’t very sharp, if you know what I mean and I think you do. But, because she was a victim and because of her gender, the systemic and cinematic double standard comes into play bulletproofing her from being seen and portrayed as a truly evil person, making evil decisions and doing evil things no matter what her excuse is.
It is the whole Carrie White villain debate all over again. Yes, in the film and Stephen King’s book, Carrie was cruelly bullied by the other students. Does that though give her license to kill the entire student population, including a teacher who tried to help her, BBQing them with her newly-found mutant brain powers in that unforgettable prom scene? I say, no. In the end, Bradley and the Thomas Ewen Consolidated High School or Bates High School students are vile human beings but Carrie and Linda are the true monsters of their own victim stories.
Watch: In theatres
You would think after two mediocre movies the filmmakers would have learned from their mistakes. Nope. They brought back director Christophe Gans, who shot the first film, so Return looks great but the plot, acting is of the undead variety. Jeremy Irvine (Treadstone) and his beard play James Sunderland, a blundering drunken idiot searching for his lost love.
Unable to break the hold a cult had on his girlfriend Mary (Hannah Emily Anderson, Jigsaw), James said goodbye to her and Silent Hill. A mysterious letter brings him back years later but Silent Hill looks like a Godzilla puke all over it with ash, smoke in the air and monstrosities on the ground.
Unlike his Silent Hill 2 game counterpart, James is such a dismal misery magnet he is impossible to cheer for. The tragic acting makes the stilted dialogue even worse. You’d swear the script was written in another language and translated into English it is that awkward and rigid. Return is the third strike for the floundering franchise. Just bench it for good already.
Watch: In theatres
Sometimes humans will do anything to survive. Shadowing the theme of last year’s alien Wellwood, Mother of Flies has a real-life father and daughter (Zelda Adams and John Adams) playing a father and daughter seeking a radical cure to her cancer. Instead of exploring what modern medicine has to offer, they track down a crazy old witch in the woods who is renown for her cures as well as her curses amongst the hillbillies. Unless you get a kick out of psychedelic imagery like you would see at a Dead concert, Mother of Lies is just a muddled mess of noise and nonsense. The acting is forced and contrived. The plot is so laboured and methodical you have to scratch and claw for any kind of momentum, our next point of interest. Worst of all, it is yet ANOTHER horror film by a generation who cannot seem to deal with grief and loss. The world would thank you if you would just go to therapy instead of recycling the same theme over and over and over again.
Watch: Shudder
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