Send Help

Linda Liddle is a bright young woman, always smiling and diligent in her work, though at times awkward in social interactions. She has worked for seven years at a company whose CEO has recently passed away; he is succeeded by his son, Bradley Preston. Bradley is charismatic, yet at the same time insensitive and ruthless, and his goal is to get rid of Linda.

The two, along with other colleagues, set off on a business trip to Bangkok, but during the flight the plane crashes. Linda and Bradley are the sole survivors and find themselves stranded on a tropical island in the middle of nowhere. Over the course of the film, the habits, roles, and relationship between the two protagonists continuously shift, redefining who they are and bringing to light aspects of their personalities that had previously remained hidden.

The two characters embody contemporary archetypes, generated and shaped by a social contract that cages the individual both physically and, above all, mentally. Linda has worked for years in the same office space, divided from adjacent workstations only by a partition that prevents eye contact and greetings, yet disappears when it comes to spying or eavesdropping: everyone against everyone else, in the climb up the social pyramid toward a higher, more prestigious, more dominant role.

Linda, however, does not allow herself to be crushed by the obstacles imposed by society. She always keeps smiling, believes that her efforts will one day be rewarded, and tries to socialize with her colleagues, even if she often does so in an awkward, almost embarrassing way. Bradley is her opposite: a brazen character who obtained the role of CEO without any effort, purely through succession. He lacks empathy and exercises his power in a tyrannical and irrational manner, simply because his position allows him to do so.

The two characters are therefore clearly defined—or rather, trapped within their respective roles. It is here that the film’s title finds its full meaning: Send Help. The first cry for help is not issued when the protagonists are already shipwrecked on the island, but from the very beginning, when we see them confined within their social cages, unable to evolve. Help arrives paradoxically with the plane crash itself: the two social archetypes are freed from every limitation and every construct. They no longer answer to a CEO, but to Mother Nature; they no longer have to climb the social pyramid, but the food chain, and roles become interchangeable.

Linda, in fact, is an expert in survival and knows all the necessary tricks to stay alive, while Bradley suddenly finds himself without a private chef, without cutting-edge technology, and, above all, stripped of his position of power.

At this point in the story, the development seems predictable: Linda will face every hardship of the island with a smile, without betraying her docile and altruistic nature, while Bradley, softened by her optimism, will discover a more “human” side of himself, long repressed. But Raimi does not want to reassure or deceive the viewer; he wants to lay bare true human nature, wrapped and concealed beneath layers of illusion produced by consciousness itself.

The events that follow allow us to move beyond the surface of the characters’ psyches and to grasp their true nature more deeply. Linda proves to be anything but altruistic: hers is not a simple inclination to do good, but a necessity. She needs someone to depend on her, and when something becomes necessary, it is demanded, imposed on others, and pursued at all costs. On several occasions, Linda has the chance to leave the island, but she refuses, convinced that “on the island there is everything they need.”

Linda may not be a slave to society, but she is enslaved by a force even more powerful, ancestral, and intrinsic to every human being: the will to live. A hunger to perpetuate one’s own needs, an egoistic, blind, and irrational force that nonetheless belongs to the essence of us all. In Bradley, Linda does not see a human being in need of help, but a means to satisfy this hunger, to nourish her “false altruism,” even at the cost of confining him to the island.

Bradley, for his part, finds the very idea of depending on someone else repugnant. He is trapped in an aporia, in a vicious circle that he cannot—and perhaps does not want to—break. He is the CEO of a company and dominates his employees, without whom, however, he would be nothing. They depend on him just as much as he depends on them. This dialectic finds no resolution even in life on the island, where Bradley’s constant resistance to the inversion of roles culminates in the absurd attempt to escape alone on a raft, destroyed by the waves just a few meters from the shore.

In reality, the Master–Servant dynamic is never fully abandoned: the roles are reversed, but the structure remains intact. Bradley, whether he likes it or not, depends on Linda, who in turn depends on his needs.
 Is there, then, a way out of these forms of enslavement? No—or at least, this is what Raimi seems to suggest. Bradley has no possibility of redemption, and Linda ultimately abandons herself completely to her need to be needed, culminating in a final confrontation that will see her emerge victorious.

The cycle, however, is not broken: one can change masters, but human beings remain slaves—slaves to their own nature and to that of others. Not by chance, at the end of the film Linda becomes the new CEO of the company and is about to publish a book about her social ascent.