Directing: B+
Acting: A-
Writing: B+
Cinematography: B+
Editing: A-
Special Effects: B

Here is a movie that works incredibly well even though the special effects are not quite perfect. Why? Because Sam Raimi understands good writing, good pacing, and delivering the goods. Send Help has no pretensions, spends no time trying to convince us something it’s not, and then is so well executed it rises above its knowing, trash-entertainment premise. If Sam Raimi had directed 9 to 5, a movie so old now that anyone under the age of 40 probably doesn’t know what the hell it is (look it up, you won’t regret it), it might have been a lot more like Send Help. Come to think of it 9 to 5 and Send Help would make a spectacular double feature.

And this is quite the comeback: Send Help is Raimi’s best film since Spider-Man 2, which was released in 2004. I lot of people really liked the unique touch he brought to Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, but I didn’t think it was that great—ditto Oz the Great and Powerful. But with Send Help, we see Sam Raimi going back to his roots. And by that I mean pre-Spider-Man, fun-gory roots.

Everything Send Help does, it does incredibly well. This would be an absolute blast to go in blind, as it begins in an corporate office setting, Linda Liddle (a spectacular Rachel McAdams) being a talented worker with no people skills who is dealing with people taking credit for her work, and Bradley Preston (a superbly cast Dylan O'Brien) coming in to take over his late father’s job as the new boss and bluntly telling Linda why he’s offering his frat buddy the job that had been promised to her. Between Anna Cahill’s costume design and McAdams’s performance, Linda’s “awkward frumpiness” is laid on really thick—these scenes are so deeply and so effectively awkward that they made me want to hide under my chair more than any of the horrors we see later in the movie. And best of all, at this point, unless you’ve seen the trailer, you have no idea what’s coming. Someone going in blind would still think this is, say, an awkward office comedy, something akin to a contemporary take on Office Space, perhaps.

And boy, would you be wrong. Of course, you might also wonder why they handed out 3D glasses when you walk in. At least, I did: the AMC booking said nothing about this being a 3D movie. But when Bradley and Linda are on the same flight to Bangkok and there’s suddenly a spectacular plane crash sequence, the 3D starts to make sense. Except, to be honest, I’m certain I would have enjoyed the sequence—and the entire movie—just as much in 2D, perhaps even more. This is here some of the special effects show their seams, but the entire sequence is so well staged, and critically, features so much gruesome humor, the quality of the effects hardly even matter. It really is true that it’s not the size of the budget, it’s how you use it.

Here are the only other things you need to know. Bradley is a douche at his core and he’s a pompous idiot. Linda is a survivalist who once auditioned for the actual show Survivor, and she has skills both in and out of the office that put Bradley to shame. And what becomes increasingly clear is that they would both go to great lengths to achieve their selfish aims—and by “great” I mean “horrifying.”

It was smart to cast Dylan O'Brien in this part for many reasons, but not least of them is his relatively scrawny physique. He’d still be physically stronger than Linda under normal circumstances, but he also spends much of the story being nursed to health after an injury. This levels the playing field when it comes to brute strength, but Linda has the upper hand in the skills department, while Bradley takes some time to register that he’s not the boss anymore. As the story unfolds, it becomes a battle of wills in which they are constantly upping the ante, to the point where they are beginning to literally tear each other apart.

There’s something special about the graphic violence in Send Help. On one level, it’s cartoonish; on another level, it’s just-enough over the top to become effectively comical. I seem to have a weakness for hilarious violence, of which there is plenty in this movie. And yet, Raimi actually employs it sparingly—as this film masterfully convinces you it has slipped into a pleasant dramedy about how two office adversaries learn to get along under extraordinary circumstances. And then, suddenly, one of them reveals one deception or another, and the other one steps further over the line. And it’s always in ways you don’t see coming, like the gouging an eye, or what appears to be castration. I’m barely scratching the surface here. Just ask that eyeball.

Send Help would have been a blast without it, but we even get the most delightful twist near the end. It’s almost shocking how well everything works in this movie, because it’s such a “trash entertainment” premise. But the writing, by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, truly elevates the material, and the inspired casting choices really make the difference. This is a movie that could have been garbage, and in fact it was given a release date usually given to garbage. But this is what a genuinely good January release can and should be—spectacularly well-executive entertainment. I couldn’t have asked for a better time at the movies.

Overall: B+