How Send Help's Violence Is Symbolic Of Linda's Transformation, Explained By Director Sam Raimi

Warning: There are spoilers ahead for Send Help.Send Help director Sam Raimi reveals that the violence has a deeper and symbolic meaning for Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams).

Linda is an unappreciated, dedicated, and meek employee who is mistreated by her arrogant new boss, Bradley Preston (Dylan O'Brien). When they are the sole survivors of a plane crash and find themselves on a desert island, their power dynamic is upended, with the survival expert Linda now confident and in control. Between viscerally killing a boar, splattering Bradley's face with rat blood when she makes him think he's being castrated, and beating him to death with a golf club during Send Help's ending, there is no shortage of gore in the film.

While speaking with SlashFilm, Raimi explains that the blood symbolizes the birthing process and Linda being reborn on the island. He details the substantial ways she changes from the beginning to her time away from civilization, where she uses the harsh environment to find new strength and power inside herself. Check out Raimi's comments below:

This character went through a tremendous transformation. She's an office worker that gets stranded on this deserted island, and there's a rebirth that takes place because of the harshness of the island, the person she's got to find within herself to be strong enough. And it's kind of a birthing process, and blood, I felt, should have been an element of it. And I like horror movies and I love the effect that it has on the audience.

Send Help is a return to the horror genre for Raimi after a long hiatus, as the last feature-length horror movie he directed was Drag Me to Hell in 2009. He has a long history with the genre, especially when it comes to the Evil Dead franchise, and has an understanding of the effect that excessive blood and similar elements can have on the audience. Other than one jump scare moment during a dream of Linda's, though, his newest film does not rely on the supernatural horror that has dominated much of his past work.

In ScreenRant's Send Help review, Todd Gilchrist praises Raimi's approach and the leading performances: "McAdams and O’Brien go to unhinged places with their characters that we’ve never seen in their earlier work, and Raimi ensures that we see every (literally) gory detail with the same affection he clearly has for their efforts." As indicated by the 94% Tomatometer score, other critics are impressed, and so are audiences, who have given it an 89% score on Rotten Tomatoes.

Linda's transformation goes beyond the violence, her survival skills, and the clear upper hand she has over Bradley on a day-to-day basis for the majority of the movie. It is also present in the way she outsmarts him with the secret about the luxury house on the other side of the island and preventing them from being rescued.

Earlier in Send Help, she used her intelligence to help the company that did not appreciate her work and would never have concealed such a massive secret from them. Now, she has no problem keeping the knowledge to herself to get what she wants. Her transformation is further cemented by her return to society, where she lies about what really happened and becomes wealthy and famous.