Send Help (2026)
Send Help (2026) is the film equivalent of a mandatory team building exercise with your least favorite co-worker. It is tense, hilarious, and manages to deliver a very satisfying conclusion that feels almost wrong to enjoy. This essay, this metaphorical message in a bottle, is my attempt to understand why I feel that way, and to share it with whoever might find it on some digital shore.
Work Retreats Suck
Send Help revolves around two characters: Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) and Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien). Linda has been working under Bradley’s father for years, and, while not the best at navigating the social and political dimensions of the workplace, is a highly valued employee. She’s a workhorse who gets the kind of results that make executives and shareholders very happy. Outside of work, Linda is passionate about the outdoors and dreams of going on the show Survivor. She is also expecting a big and well deserved promotion. Go Linda.
That’s where Bradley comes into the picture. If an unhinged corporate deity brought the example bad boss from a Human Resources training video to life, it would be Bradley Preston. He is a stereotypical trust fund kid who inherits the title of CEO from his deceased father. He plays favorites, is willing to abuse his power and position, and treats people like Linda as completely dispensable despite getting by on their hard work. So, its not surprising that he almost immediately decides to pass over Linda for the promotion in favor of his friend and fraternity brother, Donovan (Xavier Samuel). To add insult to injury, Donavon, in view of Linda, shows Bradley her Survivor audition tape.
The laughter and mockery that ensue don’t last. The plane, as if to spare Linda the embarrassment, suffers a dramatic failure and crashes into the ocean. Linda and Bradley, the sole survivors, now find themselves stranded on a remote island. For Bradley, this is a nightmare. He is suffering a leg injury that makes it hard for him to walk, his friends are dead, and his fiancé Zuri (Edyll Ismail) is an ocean away with no way to know if he is alive or dead. Worst of all, Linda is doing just fine. In fact, she is better than fine. For Linda, this is better than any Survivor fantasy she could have hoped for. She is building luxurious shelters and effortlessly getting sustenance for her and Bradley. All while having plenty of time to learn to hunt boar and make sushi with dipping sauces. She is in her element, and despite all of Bradley’s complaints and attempts to manage the situation, he is at her mercy.
She is the boss.
Crossing Professional Boundaries
As the film progresses, tensions rise as Bradley wants to try and escape the island and Linda wants to make their new arrangement last. Poison is fed, a castration is staged, and hurtful words are exchanged, but this is all more or less tit for tat power negotiation. You know, heated arguments over their vision for the shared business venture that is their survival. But unlike in business, getting ahead on the island is not about who you know but what you know. And Linda has a secret that will push Bradley past the point of no return.
Linda, and the audience, have been aware of efforts to locate any survivors of the plane crash. At first, Linda was able to keep their presence on the island a secret. But, when Bradley’s fiancé arrives with help, Linda is unable to hide the the fact of their survival. So, unable to bear the thought of leaving, she chooses to lead the would be rescuers to their deaths. When that doesn’t go as planned, she goes all in on murder.
A short while later, an already mentally broken Bradley, thanks to Zuri’s small fortune of an engagement ring, finds her body while trying to hunt a boar. Bradley confronts Linda and the two begin an island spanning fight to the death that takes them into a section of the island that Linda had warned Bradley to avoid. It is there that Bradley, and the audience, discover Linda has been hiding a second secret: A modern cliffside house. It is here, in luxurious horror that the two have their final battle. While the film leads us to think that Bradley just might emerge victorious, both he and the audience are given a not so gentle reminder that Linda is from strategy and planning.
Performance Appraisals
Before we break down my feelings on the ending, it is important to understand how the two leads are characterized in the film. Bradley is someone that most viewers probably won’t like. That isn’t to say that he doesn’t have hidden depths or good character moments, because he certainly does. But the film consistently frames him as a bad person. He treats people as expendable and exploitable. He has a fiancé but is implied to be willing to cheat on her and use his position of power in the company to facilitate this. And, most offensive of all, he doesn’t change or grow as a person from his experience on the island. Any growth he made Linda, or the audience, think he experienced was just manipulation. In a more traditional narrative, Bradley might learn and change from the experience, and that character development might make us root for him in the final moments. But the Bradley who dies on the island is the same Bradley who cruelly laughed at Linda’s Survivor audition tape moments before the plane crash.
Linda, on the other hand, is portrayed as hard working, loyal, and as someone who puts in a genuine effort to get along with people and be liked. She is a little rough around the edges in a social sense, but she is earnest. And, unlike Bradley, she does change. She goes from meek and put upon to confident and willing to fight for what she has wants. While the island brings out her worst, like murder, it also brings out her best. She is, from the beginning to the end, the character we are clearly meant to root for on this journey.
Earning the Promotion
Hold on a second. Let’s try to be fair and critical about this whole situation. Bradley kinda sucks, we can probably agree on that. But he doesn’t murder anyone. He doesn’t contrive to keep Linda trapped on an island against her will. His hilarious jailbreak attempt by raft is, arguably, rooted in a fear that Linda might do something to harm him. And his character flaws are more or less on par with many other depictions of American corporate professionals. So why am I rooting for him to lose the final fight? Isn’t Linda the clear villain in this story?
I think that the narrative answer to this is that Bradley is a bad person, and Linda is a good person who does bad things. Linda wins because for all her faults and crimes, she has better character than Bradley. That feels consistent with how the film frames the characters and justifies the decision to reward Linda in the end. That makes sense narratively, but I think there is something else going on, something more psychological. I think that the more interesting reason why I, and presumably most people in the audience, are relieved when Linda turns the tables at the end is because of what her victory represents. Linda, the woman who was subject to the whims of a bad boss with no real recourse to get what she had earned, gets the ultimate revenge. She becomes bigger than her boss. Linda, having written a successful book about surviving on the island, becomes a mega success. She gets to enjoy golf, drive fancy cars, and is having her book turned into a film. She is the victor and she gets to write history. She gets the to have the last word on Bradley, and that word is worth a fortune. That is a true power fantasy.
Hotel for Ghosts 