**© Raimi Productions and 20th Century Studios**

Send Help – Film Review

Cast: Rachel McAdams, Dylan O’Brien, Edyll Ismail, Xavier Samuel, Chris Pang, Dennis Haysbert

Director: Sam Raimi

Synopsis: Two employees become stranded on a desert island after being the sole survivors of a deadly plane crash…

Review: Navigating the world of work can feel like a lottery. If fortune smiles upon you, you might hit the jackpot and land a job that you truly love, surrounded by a fantastic team that brings laughter and camaraderie as you go about your tasks. Furthermore, you may have a boss who genuinely supports your growth, helping you harness your potential. However, some may find themselves stuck in a gruelling daily grind, trapped in a thankless role under the thumb of an overbearing manager for a company that does not value them in the slightest. Now, imagine flipping that script entirely: what if the employee suddenly found themselves in charge during a harrowing, life-or-death scenario? This intriguing setup sets the stage for a gripping survival story brought to life by the visionary master of horror Sam Raimi.

Linda Liddle (McAdams) is a diligent strategist at an unnamed Fortune 500 financial management company. She is good at her job, but is not always aware of her unkempt appearance and her socially awkward mannerisms, which alienate her colleagues and her new boss, Bradley Preston (O’Brien). Linda is expecting a promotion, but is left furious when this opportunity is awarded to one of Bradley’s frat buddies. To add insult to injury, Bradley seeks to humiliate Linda further by demoting her to a dead-end role, but not before taking her on an overseas business trip to help close an important deal. However, the plane suffers a catastrophic failure en route and crashes into the sea, with only Linda and an injured Bradley as the sole survivors. With no immediate hope of rescue, the two must put aside their differences and fight to survive. However, the ace up Linda’s sleeve is that she once auditioned for the game show Survivor and possesses the skills to help them both survive.

After a nine-year hiatus from directing, Sam Raimi pushed the boundaries to the limit by pushing the Marvel Cinematic Universe into its first big-screen foray into the realm of horror. Alas, such are the confines of the MCU, it held him back and prevented him from venturing deep into the realm of brutal and bloody horror that helped him to make his name in the 80s with the Evil Dead trilogy and latterly 2009’s Drag Me to Hell. Absolutely no such restrictions are holding him back here, enabling him to play in the endless sandpit of a desert island, where you never know what may be lurking in the terrain and resources to stay alive are few and far between.

Gone is the office environment where the boss sits at the top of the corporate pyramid, looking down on their employees with complete and total authority. Such a power dynamic where biases, corporate misogyny and sexism can go unchecked simply does not hold water on a remote island where civilisation is far off into the distance and no amount of money, power, and control can change your circumstances. Damien Shannon and Mark Swift’s script is a delightful and entertaining examination of this upended power dynamic. Imagine if Cast Away and Triangle of Sadness were combined into one big melting pot (minus the yelling at volleyballs in the case of the former) with an extra side of “eat the rich” and Raimi’s signature gore. This is the delicious and bloody outcome.

Having worked together on Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, Raimi was eager to reteam with Rachel McAdams, and it is easy to see why. Her performance is simply sensational and might just be a career-best. At first glance, it might seem a bit of a stretch for such a charismatic actor to play a socially inept and dishevelled loner who lives with her pet bird, but McAdams leans into it and completely owns it. Like a superhero, when they wash up on that island, off go the glasses and suddenly the Linda we know is gone. In her place is someone who is ready to take charge, and she will not stand for any nonsense from the man who, on paper, is her boss.

But a new location means new rules. It is delightful to see the role reversal, with O’Brien equally brilliant as the smug, pompous, and utterly full-of-himself CEO who has immense difficulty accepting the fact that the power he once wielded over this woman has been swept away. Though when you’re as entitled as he is, that is not something he will give up without a fight. The ensuing power struggle is utterly riveting and leaves you wondering how far these two will go to assert their authority over the other. You might root for her to begin with, given the fact that he is a thoroughly nasty piece of work, but Linda pushes this to its absolute limits. In typical Raimi fashion, there are some particularly gory scenes, and one dark, ominous moment in particular that will likely have at least 50% of the audience squirming with nervousness and dread.

Having two souls engaged in a psychological battle, on an island with a finite amount of space and resources, runs the risk of getting a bit stale. However, thanks to Raimi’s exciting and lively direction, Bill Pope’s lush cinematography, and the charismatic performances, any lapses in the film’s pacing are momentary and not enough to completely skew its momentum. With a $40m budget, perhaps this was stretched too thin, as certain elements of the CGI left a bit to be desired and could have been spruced up. Nevertheless, the film meets all the key performance indicators and is a perfect illustration of why bosses and company executives everywhere would be wise never to belittle or diminish their employees. You just never know when you might need their expertise to get out of a tricky life-or-death situation.

A deliciously grisly and bloody tale of a business excursion gone wrong, with committed performances from Dylan O’Brien and especially Rachel McAdams, ensures this is a thrilling return to form for Sam Raimi.

Bumblebee – Film Review

Cast: Hailee Steinfeld, John Cena, Jorge Lendeborg Jr, John Ortiz, Jason Drucker, Pamela Adlon, Dylan O’Brien, Peter Cullen, Angela Bassett, Justin Theroux

Director: Travis Knight

Synopsis: With war ravaging Cybertron, the Autobot Bumblebee arrives on Earth in 1987, where he comes into contact with Charlie (Steinfeld) a young woman who is desperately to adapt and find her place in the world in the wake of personal tragedy….

Review: Flash your minds back to 2007, when for the very first time, a film that featured cars transforming into giant robots ready to do battle, made its way onto the big screen. The expectation was sky high, and though it started out fairly promisingly, the live action Transformers franchise quickly deteriorated. With each new entry, it was starting to feel this series had run out of fuel (and ideas). It was time for some much needed new blood and metal.

For as long as he was in charge of these films, Michael Bay certainly knew one thing, how to blow a lot of shit up. Though there were some undeniably entertaining moments, the familiarity with which Bay told each of his films became extremely tiresome. Thankfully, new director Travis Knight of Kubo and the Two Strings fame comes in , making his first foray into live action film-making. Right from the opening moments of this prequel, you just know that this is going to be a completely different and refreshing experience when compared to the previous films.

For one thing, Knight has significantly dialled back the action scenes (and the explosions) in favour of more heart and character. For a bot that cannot talk Bumblebee certainly showed plenty of heart, and here once again he is brimming with that friendly personality that makes Bumblebee the lovable Autobot that he is. Right in the middle of all this is Charlie, a teenager trying to get her life together and in desperate need of a car. When she stumbles across what she suspects is your run of the mill VW Beetle, she gets caught up in a devastating and deadly conflict between the Autobots and the Decepticons.

Since this is before the time of Samuel Witwicky and his annoying parents, Steinfeld as Charlie is a very warm and welcome presence. She isn’t exactly in the most comfortable or easiest of places in her life but with Bee by her side, he is there to be a figure of support for her when she needs it most. Christina Hodson’s screenplay gives plenty of time for their relationship to develop and to grow into something truly unique that the previous movies really struggled to capture. Though her parents and brother can get marginally annoying at times, John Cena’s portrayal as a Sector 7 gives him a chance to flex his military tough guy muscles, and he’s clearly having a lot of fun with this role.

Though of course, it wouldn’t be a Transformers film if there wasn’t a scrap between Autobots and Decepticons and we get a much more in depth look at that conflict, with Peter Cullen once again voicing Optimus Prime in all of his Generation 1 glory. As usual there are a few up-to-no-good Decepticons seeking to hunt down and destroy Bumblebee and put an end to the Cybertronian Civil War. Knight’s direction is a lot more refined, choosing his moments when it comes to the action, which is a refreshing change from Bay’s wanton appetite to just blow everything to smithereens, whilst giving little thought to anything else.

By adding a plethora of 80s pop culture references into the mix, Knight and Hodson have hit upon a winning formula that provides the franchise with the CPR it needed to ensure it didn’t end up on the scrapheap. This is the film that the long time fans of the series have been wanting to see. The “Bayhem” of the previous five films are hopefully now consigned to the past, the future of the franchise now looks a lot more promising, and hopefully more films of this calibre will be transforming and rolling out in the not too distant future.

Full to the brim with heart and emotion, and a superb performance from Steinfeld ensures gives this franchise a much need course correction, whilst ensuring it is the best film in the series by a considerable margin.