Sam Raimi’s Return to Horror is Deeper Than You’d Think – Here’s What Send Help’s Ending Really Means

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Send Help stars Rachel McAdams as an executive assistant named Linda Liddle who goes on a work trip with her abusive new boss, Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien). On the way, their plane crashes, with Linda and Bradley washing up on a deserted island. The two feuding coworkers must then figure out how to live with each other among the dangers of nature. Inevitably: This article contains SPOILERS for Send Help, but here’s what it all means.

What Happens In Send Help’s Ending

Image Courtesy of 20th Century Studios

Send Help‘s climax takes place immediately after Bradley discovers the body of his deceased fiancée and her guide. He deduces that they must have been killed by Linda, leading to a massive fight between the duo. An extended battle takes place, filled with tons of gore and comedic moments. However, when Linda gets the upper hand, Bradley takes off for a part of the island that he believes is covered with vines and poisonous plants.

Upon arriving at this part of the island, Bradley learns that Linda lied to him. Rather than finding dangerous terrain, he discovers a mansion. As it turns out, Linda discovered this home shortly after seeing the first boat earlier in the film. Linda found out that it is the vacation home of a wealthy owner, so she took supplies from the building, such as the knife she uses throughout the film. However, Linda decided to keep it a secret from Bradley, leading to the lie about the poisonous plants.

Linda arrives at the mansion shortly after Bradley, at which point she tells him the truth about the mansion. She uses the house’s security cameras to monitor him as he attempts to come up with a plan. Then, she appears in front of Bradley with a shotgun. Bradley attempts to apologize, and while Linda believes it at first, she discovers that he plans on stabbing her with one of the house’s decorations. So, Bradley lunges at Linda and disarms her.

However, Linda still comes out on top. She incapacitates him with a golf club, and right as she is about to swing for Bradley’s head, the film cuts to the future. The match cut reveals Linda has made it home and is playing in a celebrity golf tournament. While being interviewed, Linda talks about how she is now famous for her story of making it off the island on a raft. Linda has fooled the world into believing that she was the sole survivor of the plane crash, keeping her time on the island with Bradley a secret.

Why Linda Killed Bradley’s Fiancée & Her Guide

Shortly before the climax of Sam Raimi’s Send Help, Linda sees another boat arriving on the island. This time, the boat contains Bradley’s fiancée, Zuri, and a guide she has brought on the search for Bradley. Linda greets the duo and tells them she is going to bring them to Bradley, who is on the other side of the island.

On their way back to camp, Linda leads the group across the mountainous path she nearly fell off of earlier in the film. Zuri falls and grabs onto the ledge, but the guide catches her. Both ask Linda for help getting up, but we don’t immediately see what happens next. Later, a flashback shows that Linda pushed the guide, with both characters falling to their deaths.

Linda’s decision to kill these characters is the most drastic step in her plan to keep Bradley on the island. Before the plane crash, Linda saw herself as a joke. She had no power in her job or at home, she didn’t have much going for her, and she was treated as a joke.

On the island, however, Linda thrived. She was more powerful and competency than Bradley, thanks to her Survivor skills, and she was able to use them to exert force over her former boss. She was enjoying how the tables had turned, and she didn’t want her time with Bradley to end. Linda knew that Zuri would rescue her and Bradley and put an end to Linda’s new life, and she simply couldn’t let that happen.

Who Is The True Villain Of Send Help?

The marketing of Send Help and the film’s first half would have you believe that the film tells a pretty clear-cut moral story. Bradley is the sexist, abusive boss, and Linda is his looked-over, underappreciated employee. Once on the island, Bradley isn’t portrayed as a good person either. He is still incredibly rude, selfish, and sexist. However, the film’s portrayal of Linda doesn’t stay the same.

When Linda gets in power, she begins to show many of the same flaws that Bradley had back in civilization. Linda is abusive, rude, and even physically threatens Bradley several times throughout the film. As things escalate, Linda even chooses to keep the two characters on the island so that she can maintain her power. She refuses to tell Bradley about the boats or the mansion, and she even goes so far as to kill two people.

However, both characters are also given sympathetic sides. Linda is already a sympathetic character by the time they crash on the island due to her workplace relationship with Bradley. Once on the island, Bradley explains that he had a bad home life and that he doesn’t enjoy being the person he is. Bradley and Linda even seem to genuinely care for each other near the middle of the film, which makes their respective dark turns so tragic.

So, Send Help doesn’t have a clear villain. Both are flawed characters who take sympathetic situations and use those situations as excuses for terrible acts. This is what makes their dynamic so interesting, with their arcs helping to develop the true meaning of Send Help.

What Send Help Really Means

Despite how comical Send Help is, there is a surprising amount of meaning to unpack within the film. One of the film’s central messages is that monsters are made, not born. Linda explicitly says this when Bradley tells her about his childhood. We then see how Linda becomes a monster while on the island, even though she was a completely normal person when we saw her at the beginning of the film.

The other main argument that Send Help makes is that power corrupts, and those in power will do anything they can to hold onto it. The island that Linda and Bradley are trapped on is an allegory for the workplace, with the only difference being who is in power. Once Linda gets power while on the island, she refuses to let it go, hoping that they will stay on the island forever.

Linda lies and kills in order to maintain her power, and when faced with giving up her power or killing the man she has power over, she chooses the latter. Linda is never held accountable for these actions, as she spins the story so that it benefits her once she is rescued. She even uses Bradley’s raft idea to save herself, directly paralleling how one of Linda’s bosses used and took credit for her work earlier in the film.

Linda and Bradley are very similar people, with writers Damian Shannon and Mark Swift using Send Help to explore how systems of power can have different effects on people based on where they exist in that system. This substance is what makes Send Help so interesting, and it proves that deep meanings can still exist under a comedic tone and goofy gore.

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