Following a plane crash, downtrodden executive Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) is marooned on an island with her sexist boss Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien).
If William Golding had spent less of his life in a posh boys’ school and more in the corporate jungle, Lord Of The Flies might have read quite a bit like Sam Raimi’s latest film. An office satire set largely on an idyllic tropical island, it’s a film that shuttles between body horror, comedy, romance and thriller, and finds something wildly entertaining on a little-explored island in-between.
McAdams plays Linda Liddle, who’s a whizz at strategy and planning but also a scruffy, unsexy embarrassment to the well-heeled (male) executives at her company. Her immediate superior (Xavier Samuel) habitually takes credit for her work; a long-dangled promotion is snatched away by nepo-baby company boss Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien) in favour of his golfing buddy. Still, Linda gamely boards the company jet to solve another problem — only for a horrific crash to leave her stranded with an injured Bradley. As luck would have it, Linda was previously an aspiring Survivor contestant who has been training for this moment. But Bradley is reluctant to acknowledge her newfound importance, so their shared struggle for survival becomes more of a struggle for supremacy.
There’s less of his showy camera work than in the old days, but this is decidedly the Raimi of Drag Me To Hell at work, in the social horror of Linda’s office missteps and the mordant, gross-out comedy of someone throwing up while performing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. His power politics are also closely observed. The visceral sense of disgust that Bradley almost immediately conceives for Linda feels all too plausible, as does the bro-y, fraternal atmosphere of their vaguely defined business. McAdams does her best to play down her looks, and turns the bubbly patter she’s done before into something blithering and awkward. More importantly, she is also adept at handling the darker moments, when Linda’s determination to assert herself turns dangerous and you begin to wonder if you’ve in fact been rooting for the right castaway.
There are shades of 9 To 5 in what follows, as the put-upon employee turns the tables on an abusive boss, but Raimi’s careful not to make things too easy. Linda is, at best, difficult to love, and at worst she’s a monster. Bradley, meanwhile, is capable of decency, somewhere under that veneer of privilege and the ruinous effects of parental neglect. The power shifts between them, almost minute-by-minute, leave you wondering if maybe we’d all be better off if these two just stay on the island, where at least they can’t hurt anyone else. It creates a satisfying tension, because you’re really not sure where this film is going to end up or how you’ll feel when it gets there. It’ll be disgusting fun along the way, though.
Gnarly, gross and delightfully unconventional, this is exactly the kind of Sam Raimi film his fans have been waiting for, carried by a committed, no-holds-barred Rachel McAdams performance.