Send Help was a total hoot with a reversal of the corporate and natural order. The clever script also gave license to Sam Raimi’s sense of humor with a few scenes of Evil Dead style humor, particularly the plane crash and the boar hunt. So if you missed it in theaters, it’s worth catching up on at home, and it also has a wealth of extras for viewers who are already fans.
The Thai beach looks beautiful, but the 4K finds some dark shadows in the airplane crash, surrounding Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams)’ scream. The campfire scenes at night and the cave they hide from the rain in also boast some 4K shadows to contrast the lush island.
Surround sound is most apparent during the plane crash, but on the island the boar grunts behind you. It also rains in every speaker.
78 minutes of deleted scenes are more than some movies’ entire runtime. Granted, a few of the animatics are repeated, but there’s still a good hour of new material. Some of those storyboards literally refer to the third executive on the flight as Red Shirt. You can see how they change the stunt choreography subtly with each pass. A cigar in the eye got softened and became a fork in the hand in the final movie.
One of the office scenes gives a closeup of the Bruce Campbell cameo. You can also see incomplete visual effects showing where the island ends and CGI begins. Linda displays more survival skills and extends her empowering moment in the waterfall. There’s a much longer take of Bradley (Dylan O’Brien) abandoned and going nuts on his own.
Raimi and producer Zainab Azizi give a full commentary full of Raimi’s deadpan goofy humor. But they get into production logistics. Interestingly, this is Raimi’s first natural setting movie, which makes sense when you consider a controlled cabin in the woods or superhero movies that maybe do location in bustling cities, but not an island.
Five featurettes total just over 20 minutes and the cast speak well about aspects of the film. During the six minute blooper reel, McAdams does the “I have created fire” speech from Cast Away.