**This article contains spoilers for Send Help.**
The year is kicking off with a new wave of movies, but with all the blockbuster slop and sequels coming out nowadays, a movie with an original concept is a challenge to come by. Fortunately, Sam Raimi’s new movie, Send Help, has generated buzz for its simple premise that shocks the audience with a bloody twist.
The trailer establishes a survival movie premise, showing the two leads as victims of a plane crash and stranded on an island. With stars like Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien in the lead roles, I half expected the movie to turn into a romantic comedy. However, with the same director as Drag Me to Hell and Evil Dead, expecting this movie to be a romance is wishful thinking.
The movie eventually reveals the real plot: a deadly cat-and-mouse game between boss and employee. Stranded from civilization, those roles don’t apply in a game of survival.
What struck me most about this movie was the emotion I felt after the credits rolled. I felt relief for the main character, Linda, but also uneasy about the movie’s ending. Although a “happy” one for Linda, the ending blurred the lines between triumph and deception. I walked out of this movie wondering if her actions felt justified and if I was satisfied with the ending.
The movie ends with Linda turning on her fellow refugee, Bradley, after he expressed a desire to return to civilization. In a bloody fight featuring gross CGI eyeballs, Linda kills Bradley and leaves his body on the island while she returns to the real world.
The ending’s refusal to clarify Linda’s morality was a conscious choice on the director’s part. Linda’s descent into madness is considered a happy ending for her character, and this arc didn’t happen out of nowhere. Viewers got to watch as she adapted to her surroundings and became powerful.
One of the most pivotal scenes in the movie, which foreshadows the bloody conclusion, is Bradley and Linda’s heart-to-heart on the beach. The duo is eating dinner when Bradley confesses to Linda that his mother was abusive, but he doesn’t blame her because her father was abusive as well.
After this revelation, Linda asked Bradley if he ever heard the saying, “Monsters aren’t born, they’re created.” In this scene, Linda is still in the submissive employee role to Bradley, as she’s still an employee adhering to her abusive boss’s emotions.
As a viewer, I put myself in Linda’s shoes. I gave Bradley the benefit of the doubt and hoped that his vulnerability was genuine. However, something always felt off, and like his vulnerability was a performance. This proved to be true as the movie progressed.
Ultimately, the movie’s conclusion ties back to something Linda said earlier, completing her character arc: she’s the monster. Just as Bradley was shaped by the abuse of his mother, Linda was shaped by his abuse in the workplace. She is now a monster, both literally and metaphorically.
In the literal sense, she’s committed murder. In the metaphorical sense, she’s now taken the position of power that she desperately wanted. Linda was even willing to stay on the island and never return home for this sense of power.
Following her return to civilization, viewers see her as a powerful public figure who’s liked and respected by others. The detail that she now plays golf, a sport she had no prior interest in, shows how she assumed the identity of Bradley in a world that once mocked and belittled her.
This ending allows the audience to feel moral ambiguity about the conclusion and how the cycle of abuse will continue. The ending is similar to the conclusion of Ari Aster’s film Midsommar. In both films, the female protagonists find release from embracing violence, and both of their happy endings are intertwined with their taking monstrous actions.
Both of these movies have female protagonists, which adds more depth to their endings. As a woman, I feel satisfied with Linda’s ending because I can sympathize with how she felt being constantly belittled by male superiors.
I think this is something that most women can relate to after watching Send Help, as the movie challenges the audience to question whether empowerment is freedom or merely a continuation of the cycle of abuse.
DOMESTIC VIOLENCE: If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic abuse, call 911 or the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1(800) 799-SAFE (7233) or visit thehotline.org
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