Send Help, dir. Sam Raimi
Sam Raimi returns to the big screen to direct his first R-rated film in over 20 years with Send Help, a gonzo survival-action-comedy starring Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien. After a work trip goes awry and their plane crashes near a deserted island, hardworking Linda (McAdams) and entitled boss Bradley (O’Brien) are the only survivors and must endure their brutal environment. Bradley is surprised to discover that Linda, despite her frumpiness and seeming ineptitude, is extremely equipped to handle island life, and thus quickly becomes his superior.
Written by Mark Swift and Damien Shannon, Send Help’s screenplay feels like a relic of the 90s or 00s, heavily utilizing visual setups and payoffs and relying on comedic beats, character tropes, and dynamics that defined previous decades. The film seems to have been handcrafted for Raimi’s directorial eye as he indulges in the grossness and grime of the island premise, unafraid to make these attractive actors look and act nastily. The film contains several of Raimi’s trademarked tricks, including a few jump scares, excessive gore, and over-the-top performances.
Being a two-hander and a genre comedy film, both of the lead performances in Send Help were excellent. McAdams and O’Brien knew precisely which tone to hit, amping up their performances in terms of comedy, action, and horror, letting themselves become cartoon characters when needed. McAdams was delightful to watch, and seeing her able to let loose was a breath of fresh air when compared with her dramatic oeuvre. O’Brien’s snarky cackle and smug affect helped to craft a perfect villain, yet one whose moments of kindness and profound weakness still lend him sympathy.
Send Help’s main downsides are its pacing, particularly in its second act, with some sequences dragging the runtime out, and some of the CGI looking less than stellar. Still, the film feels like such a unique experience because it leans into a vision of silliness. While 20 years ago letting a genre director direct a genre film would have been a drop in the bucket, at this point in filmmaking culture, the move feels like an artistic risk. Recommend!
Blue Heron, dir. Sophy Romvari
Having gone into this screening with little knowledge of director Sophy Romvari’s previous work, this was the TIFF film that surprised me the most. Blue Heron, told through the perspective of youngest daughter, Sasha (Eylul Guven), follows a Hungarian-Canadian family who are struggling to cope with the increasing behavioural issues of eldest son, Jeremy (Edik Beddoes). Romvari employs a sudden shift halfway through the film to recontextualize the story thus far, and focus on the process of recontextualization itself, asking whether art can help someone come to terms with their own history.
Blue Heron is a striking debut that indicates a talent far greater than Romvari’s age and experience might suggest; she deftly handles themes of family, detachment, and self-reflection, utilizing a temporally layered story and a unique style that feels akin to a home movie. The filmmaking endears the audience to the family, as we are given intimate access to their inner lives and can witness their struggles to understand and protect one another, despite the clear love they share.
The performances are as strong as the writing and direction, with everyone across the board delivering thoughtful and careful work. Guven’s soft sincerity played against Beddoes’ inscrutable countenance is as tender as it is unnerving. Ádám Tompa and Iringó Réti as the parents of this household provide authenticity in the ways they struggle and exhaust themselves over and over again for the sake of their family.
The emotional gut-punch of Blue Heron’s latter half comes slowly and then all at once. The viewer questions the sudden change in protagonist, setting, and, seemingly, time, until it all begins to make sense once again. I heard more than my fair share of sniffles from the audience — myself included — once the third act set in, when many lingering questions were answered and the characters were able to reach points of catharsis previously unseen in other works on familial trauma. I found this to be an overwhelmingly excellent debut feature that reflects incredibly well on Romvari’s future directorial output and on Canadian filmmaking as a whole. Highly recommend! Double York University bonus points!
