As a practicing Catholic, I was repelled by the final line in Send Help.  I will not reveal now who said it.  That will come up later.  At any rate, it goes, “No help is coming, so you better start saving yourself.”  That runs as exactly counter as is possible to God’s saving grace.  Put differently, nothing is possible without God.  It is for this reason that I found myself getting increasingly uncomfortable while watching this film.  Call me square, but I do not like it when the bad guys win.  Then again, I am not sure there are any good guys, or women, here.  Instead, some of director Sam Raimi’s horror themes are interspersed with what is supposed to be more of a psychological thriller.  The film works on this last count, but I did not enjoy it all the same.

It is difficult to tell what Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) enjoys at the beginning of Send Help other than her same routine in her job in her company’s planning and strategy department.  This is a roundabout way of saying that she analyzes numbers and comes up with long-term corporate plans.  She has been a dedicated employee for seven years, and her latest report has her thinking that her expected promotion should be soon coming.  One of her issues, though, is that she is socially awkward.  Interacting with her co-workers usually devolves into her misreading the tone of her comments, and she lets others take advantage of her.  This happens early as the aforementioned analysis is taken by Donovan (Xavier Samuel), one of the managers, and passed on as his own.  Later that night, we see Linda at home talking this over with her pet bird, trying to ease her fears by reminding herself of the new position she would be filling.  In establishing shots, we also see that she is a survival enthusiast, and she sits down with a glass of wine to watch the latest episode of Survivor (2000-present).  The next day at work, she is re-introduced to Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien).  He is the new chief executive officer (CEO) of the company at which Linda works.  I say “re-introduce” because one of the first things she says to him is that they had met previously at a Christmas party.  Because he had inherited his position from his late father, he has an air of entitlement that has him saying pleasantries to her face, but insults her in private.  Worse is when he tells Franklin (Dennis Haysbert), one of the company higher-ups, that Bradley is not going to give Linda the vice-president post for which she had been hoping.  Instead, it will go to Donovan since they are “bros” from college.  Word of this gets around the office quickly, and when Linda finds out, she strides into Bradley’s office to confront him.  His solution had been to ship her to their upcoming China office, which will be a part of their holdings once they complete an about-to-be-completed merger.  To show her that she is valued, they invite her to come overseas on the company jet to help the process.  On the flight, too, is Donovan, who has found Linda’s Survivor audition online.  She is working in the back on a new report while the dudes in the front, especially Bradley, laugh at her hokeyness.  Amidst their chuckles, the plane experiences serious turbulence, which tosses around the cabin those not buckled into their seatbelts.  The shaking gets more violent and quickly the vehicle is breaking apart.  Some, like Donovan, try to yank Linda out of her seat, but she stabs his hand with a fork.  When they crash into the water, she is able to find a floating seat and eventually washes ashore on a nearby island.  Not long after coming to, she notices Bradley unconscious on the beach.  She drags him further from the waves and nurses him back to health.  While he recovers, she puts all her survival skills to use, making shelter, building a fire, obtaining fresh water, and providing food.  Once Bradley regains his senses, it does not take him long to criticize what she is doing.  To him, she should be trying to signal for help instead of doing anything else.  She responds by walking away, leaving him to his own devices as he slowly dies of thirst.  Yet, she does not let this happen, and upon returning she suggests that he needs to trust her.  This goes on while his severely injured leg heals, but all he can see is her not wanting to do anything to further their rescue.  There is some truth to this statement.  He limps away in anger at one point, thinking he can get by on his own.  During this time, she spots a boat just off shore, but does not call to it.  Instead, she goes back to their camp and waits for him to beg to be allowed to return.  For a time, a truce is settled wherein she teaches him some of her skills, all the while eyeing the knife she said she found washed up on the sand.  One night, citing all her hard work, he offers to make her dinner.  The food has been spiked with a poisoned berry, which knocks her out while he grabs a raft he secretly built and tries to paddle away.  This fails and once again she saves him, though with a lot of puking on him.  The next day, he tries to explain away his behavior, while she gives him some octopus skewers to eat.  What he does not know is that the little skewered creatures have a neurotoxin in them that renders him temporarily paralyzed.  As he sits unmovable, she threatens to cut off his manhood if he misbehaves once more.  They then try to start over again, but she is shocked when, on the other side of the island, she spots Bradley’s fiancée, Zuri (Edyll Ismail), about to land with a local guide (Thaneth Warakulnukroh).  Linda does not want their sojourn to end, so she takes them by a dangerous, cliffside route and pushes them to their deaths.  Linda is distraught about the matter, but Bradley is enraged when he finds her washed-up hand and engagement ring.  A fight to the death ensues, and during it we learn there has been a private, luxurious island mansion there the entire time.  She had found it first, which is how she obtained the knife.  Their struggle ends there with her beating him to death with a golf club.

The final scene in Send Help features Linda swinging a golf club, not at Bradley’s head, but hitting a golf ball on a course back in civilization.  A year has passed since her ordeal and she has become a celebrity, writing a book about her experience.  This is the source of the line I quoted in the introduction.  The fact that the film concludes in this manner is apropos given that her nemesis had once stated that her lack of golfing skills was one of the reasons she could not be promoted.  It is details like this that make it a well-made movie, but it is the overall message that has this Catholic not liking it.  I struggle with this aspect of being a critic sometimes because I want to build up my fellow man.  Indeed, upon being asked about the movie by my friends who are staying with me, I said that I enjoyed it until I did not.  The reason for the swing in my feelings toward it is because I empathized with Linda in the beginning.  She worked hard to earn a promotion, and she had a right to feel angry for being passed-over for arbitrary reasons.  Despite her anger, she took a Godly approach to this setback, vowing to continue to work hard and hope for the best.  The audience is privy to the conversations Bradley has that would render that impossible, but she initially has the right attitude.  It is when the roles are reversed that I start to have a problem.  Again, this makes for great cinema, but poor behavior in real life.  While she does save him a couple more times on the island while suffering a few more insults, she becomes obsessed with the power she exercises over him.  It is why she lets the first boat pass, and it leads to her killing Zuri and the guide.  Because of these actions, I stopped rooting for her, though it is somewhat of a blessing that she survives.  It would be nice if she realized that fact.

The main fact in Send Help is that Linda did not save herself.  An act of God brought the plane down, and that same Divine force allowed her to make it to the island unharmed.  To a certain degree, she is thankful for being still alive, but she does not thank any kind of higher power for this occurrence.  Instead, she gets to work doing what she needs to continue existing.  Her interactions with Bradley ultimately become about teaching him a lesson, which is also not her place to do.  She can be a hand in that sort of education, but she goes beyond this limited mandate, lording over him her survival abilities.  Despite the apparent psychological grip she has over him, I thought for a moment that he had learned his lesson.  Though he clearly still wants to get off the island, unlike her, he does appear to be docile if for a little while.  The fact that he proves incapable of growth is also disappointing.  When God brings us difficulties, it is as important to see His hand at work in it as it is during happier times.  Equally vital is knowing that God loves us through it all.  In struggle, there might be something to learn that will help us grow closer to Him and/or be a better person.  That none of this happens for Bradley is almost as sad as Linda’s power trip.  It is because of this latter outcome that I said that I do not like it when the bad guys win.  Perhaps it is not my place to make such judgements.  I could accept that argument.  What I can say is that her actions are not what I would call Christian behavior.

I hope that my discussion of Send Help does not stray from Christian behavior.  As I have said, it is a well-made movie, but not one that inspires anything good.  I am all for female empowerment, but not in this manner.