Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien find themselves in the worst-case scenario for the latest genre-bending film, Send Help.

Estranged co-workers Linda Liddle (McAdams) and Bradley Preston (O’Brien) spend the entirety of the Sam Raimi film trying to survive after they are the only ones to wash ashore on a nearby island following a tragic plane crash.

According to the film’s logline, “In Send Help, two colleagues become stranded on a deserted island, the only survivors of a plane crash. On the island, they must overcome past grievances and work together to survive, but ultimately, it’s an unsettling, darkly humorous battle of wills and wits to make it out alive.”

“The power changes once they get to that island,” Raimi told Blavity’s Shadow and Act in an interview ahead of the film’s premiere.

He continued, “But the writers, [Damian] Shannon and Mark [Swift], came up with that concept, and they thought that this conflict between these two individuals had to be stripped of any other people or mechanisms. It was only them, because in our world, as the movie starts, Bradley is the mean boss to Linda, and he’s unnecessarily cruel to her. He’s unfair and just uses power like a whip. It’s horrible. He treats her like an animal. And it’s only once the plane crashes and they’re alone on this island do we really get to see who they are underneath, and Bradley is really a coward and a bully. Linda is actually a woman of substance. She knows some things that in her office don’t matter but here [on the island] mean the difference between life and death. So we see that power dynamic shift, and I think the writers felt it had to be unperturbed by the influence of other people. And so the deserted island motif, they thought, was the best way to present these characters stripped of everything that society gives them so we could find out who they really are underneath.”

What the island represents for each character

For Liddle, who obsesses over the show Survivor and even submits an audition tape to be cast, the island is a place where she appears to be in her true element.

“I think it’s a real place of wish fulfillment for her,” McAdams, who received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame less than 24 hours before our interview, said.

“We’re at that point at the beginning of the movie, where you see Linda is like, ‘This is my one last chance at the life I imagined,’ and then it’s taken from her. And then, through tragic circumstances, she gets it back and in spades, you know. I mean, like, every fantasy she ever had, all is happening in front of her, and she’s finally the agent of her world,” McAdams continued. “I think the best she was hoping for was a little bit of freedom within the confines of her life, and this was landing on the island. She gets to be a superhero. She gets to transform completely. It’s just something that doesn’t really happen to people at that certain point in their lives. She’s living her best life, she really is, and most people would be like, ‘This is the worst.’”

On the other hand, it is a living hell for Bradley.

“He comes from a world where he’s always, I think, had everything, so he doesn’t really know what the other looks like,” O’Brien said. “Of course, these are material things, right? He’s never had to work for a job. He’s never really had to work for friends. He’s never really felt what it’s like to be on the outskirts or not have anyone or maybe be alone.”

The Saturday Night actor added, “So you have all of these sorts of things of a guy, generally, who comes from quite a lot of privilege, and his reflex a day after being lucid again, he’s like, ‘All right, let’s go, come on. I still have Pilates I can make on Thursday.’ What’s really cool, I think, about the piece and these characters is that they’re there so multilayered, and it’s not just a one-dimensional thing. You start filling in a little bit of each of their backgrounds, like the movie takes a different shape; it really starts morphing.”

So, what happens in the end?

At the end of the day, Linda Liddle serves as a metaphor for women who are often overlooked, underappreciated and downright disrespected.

“There’s a line at the end of the movie when she’s, I can’t give too much away, but she says, ‘No help is coming. You have to save yourself.’ And I think that’s such a beautiful message,” Zanaib Azizi, the film’s co-producer alongside Raimi, said. “You know, we’re in a society where we always assume someone’s going to save us, but we really need to love ourselves and depend on ourselves to thrive and be strong in today’s society. So I hope that’s at least one of the messages the film conveys.”

Send Help, starring Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien, premieres in theaters nationwide Jan. 30.

Sam Raimi

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