One of the universal experiences in life is to have a rotten boss. In the interest of keeping my current job, I will harken back to a job that, on paper, I should have loved.
Decent hours, free movies and a discount on purchases. It should have been a dream come true.
I started at Blockbuster in May of 2002. It wasn't for a couple of years that I began working with this specific individual. For the sake of semi-anonymity, we'll call her Andrea.
Andrea, known as Julie in a previous review I wrote, was somewhat of a sad character. She was eternally jealous of everyone else. Blockbuster became somewhat of a revolving door of college students in the time I worked there. Some of these workers were good, some bad. It didn't matter. What mattered was whether or not Andrea liked them.
Andrea would pick apart other women. Speak about their makeup or what they wore, how they presented themselves. All of these critiques were especially interesting considering Andrea was engaged to a man that believed both bathing and deodorant were optional. And it's not really as though Andrea's fiance had much going for him so that he had space to be a disgusting human being. Maybe if the guy looked like Ryan Gosling we could excuse him for smelling like a rotting gosling.
And no one truly liked Andrea. Many just dealt with her because she would throw actual tantrums if things didn't go her way. As a good-natured prank, we replaced her employee picks with all Jennifer Love Hewitt movies. When she saw this, she went to the store manager and demanded those responsible be written up and potentially fired. Andrea would also regularly sexually harass the male employees there. It was just the worst.
But, and it should be noted, this all was when she was just a cashier. Pretty soon, she became a shift leader and then, as if having made a deal with The Devil himself, she became assistant store manager. What little power came with these two positions went straight to her head. She would sit at the front desk throughout her entire shift, never put back any movies or do any other tasks, instead delegating them to her subordinates.
There was a cashier that was hired (we'll call him John). Good guy and attractive by most metrics. Andrea began having a weird obsession with him. Despite the fact John had a significant other, Andrea would constantly ask John, while they were both on the clock and in front of customers, extremely inappropriate and disgustingly specific questions about (I guess in the interest of keeping this review somewhat appropriate, we'll go with...) sizes of certain things.
At one point, I had written a play that won an on-campus play contest. This play was written with a friend in mind. Yes, at the time I had feelings beyond friendship for this friend, but she was an actress so what of it? Get off my back. I had brought the play into work to edit it while I was on break. I left a copy of the play in a plastic file thing-y that I kept other personal things in while I worked.
A few days after this, I was informed by another employee that I may need to have a talk with Andrea. Andrea, entirely on her own with zero prompting from me, decided to, without my permission, read the play. After reading the play, she looked at this other employee and was slack jawed. Our coworker looked at Andrea, saying, "What's wrong?"
Andrea's eyes remained wide, jaw slack. "I think he wrote this about me."
Our co-worker laughed. It was an open secret at Blockbuster at the time that the play was about my friend and I had an enormous crush on this friend.
Andrea, almost offended, told our co-worker, "What are you laughing at? I'm serious. I'm engaged to (Smelly Boy). This is way inappropriate."
Our co-worker said, "Andrea, this is about Adam's actress friend, Samantha (not her real name). You know this. It's pretty much all he talks about."
Andrea, as though constructing one of those red yarn conspiracy boards in real time, shakes it off. "Keith (not his real name), you don't think that he's just telling everyone that because he's afraid to tell me how he feels?"
Keith looked at his girlfriend, shaking his head. "Andrea, you and Adam hate each other."
"Yeah, but, maybe we don't. Maybe it's like a schoolyard bully thing. He pulls my hair, I call him 'stupid', but that just means we actually like each other."
Keith said, "Are you saying..."
Andrea rears her head back. "What? Ew. No. I have no interest in him. Gross. But he clearly has interest in me."
Keith shakes his head, "Andrea, no. He likes Samantha quite a bit."
"I don't think so, Keith." Andrea tapped the pages from the play on the desk, returning it to the place she took it from.
Once Keith informed me of this, I asked Andrea if I could speak with her in private. The two of us went into the office. We both sat down.
"Andrea, I just wanted to let you know something real quick. It's not a huge deal, but I just wanted to be clear. The play, 'Something Blue', that's about Samantha. You know that, right?"
Bewildered, Andrea's eyes went wide. "I don't know who said what to you, Adam, but I don't care about your personal life. The fact you're my subordinate and you're coming to me with this information tells me that you're way too focused on the wrong things while you're at work. This is incredibly inappropriate."
"Andrea, I'm not sure what the implications are here, but all I'm telling you is the play I wrote, the one that's going to have the reading in the next couple of weeks, that's about Samantha. It has come to my attention that you're telling people that you thought it was written about you."
Andrea scoffed. "I don't know what Keith is telling you but he's lying and you shouldn't just believe everything that comes out of his mouth."
I paused, nodding. "Who said anything about Keith?"
This obviously hit a nerve. Andrea was scrambling. This was not my goal.
"It doesn't matter. It's cool. I'm just letting you know so there's no confusion. The invitation remains, though."
Andrea shook her head. "What are you even talking about?"
"If you wanted to come to the reading, you're still welcome to."
"We'll see," Andrea said dismissively. "I have work to do."
Not sure what work she was talking about considering neither of us were on the clock, but I left the office area anyway and went about my day.
The program had two performances. Friends and family showed up. Unfortunately, so did Andrea. After the performance, she and another coworker approached me in the lobby of the theater. I thanked them both for coming and Andrea barely let me finish what I was saying before she said, "Samantha isn't that pretty."
I laughed, figuring Andrea was joking. "What do you mean?"
Andrea was entirely straight faced. "Your little girlfriend, Samantha or whatever. She's not very pretty and she wears way too much makeup. And she seems like kind of a (expletive)."
"How were you able to tell that just from her performance?"
Andrea laughed dryly. "You can just tell. And she has a huge (expletive)."
I shrugged. "Some people don't have a problem with that kind of thing." I was trying to keep things light.
Andrea, entirely serious, yells, "Well, I do!"
She stormed off, leaving the other coworker to stand there awkwardly for a minute, congratulate me and then leave.
The next day I came to work when Andrea was working, she made my life awful. She would continually criticize me, goad me regarding Samantha and certain physical attributes she had as well as telling me I had no chance to ever be with her. At one point, I said to Andrea, "If Samantha is this wildebeest that you keep describing her as, how wouldn't I have a shot with her?"
Andrea lashed back. "Oh, so now all women are animals?!"
It was that kind of stuff from then on. The scintilla of power that Andrea had made her believe she could be rotten whenever she wanted. In the unlikeliest of hypotheticals of Andrea and I crash landing on a deserted island, I'd be testing out all the berries I could find until I found the poisonous ones. I would just hope that whatever one I found was at least relatively painless.
That's where I give Linda Liddle a lot of credit. She has an entitled nitwit for a boss. Bradley Preston inherited his position after his father died. He doesn't want to work. He just wants to play golf with his buddies and use the power he has to populate his office with aesthetically pleasing subordinates. Linda is a workhorse. Bradley's father told her she was in line for a promotion and once Bradley takes over, Bradley wants to give the position to his friend instead. In an effort to be "fair", Bradley offers Linda the chance to prove him wrong and has her tag along on a trip. On the way there, their plane goes down and they're the only survivors.
That's the set-up. Simple enough. One of my writing professors always told the class, "You need to have just enough plot to hang your hat on." In other words, you don't need to overly complicate a plot to write a successful story. Not everything needs to have a labyrinthine plot like "Inception" or "Chinatown". Sometimes, you just need to put two characters in the same room and see what they do and how they play off one another.
To get into the plot or any of the specific scenes would ruin the experience for anyone seeing "Send Help". Part of the joy of a film like this is the fact that it's pretty surprising despite its pretty basic plot. It's not necessarily what happens that's surprising, but how it's handled.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with Sam Raimi by name, most of you would probably know him from his work. He directed the original "Evil Dead" trilogy ("The Evil Dead", "Evil Dead 2: Dead By Dawn" and "Army of Darkness") as well as the "Spider-Man" trilogy starring Tobey Maguire. He is and always has been one of the most creative and exciting directors out there. His mixture of slapstick comedy and gross out humor has always been refreshing. Watching practically any Raimi film, you get the sense that he's just off camera, giggling to himself over what he's getting away with.
There are sequences in "Send Help" that showcase his visual flair and his penchant for tension, but also his skill of directing actors. In 1998, he directed a film called "A Simple Plan". Without getting too much into it, it doesn't really scream Sam Raimi. Considering his pedigree up to that point, you wouldn't think he'd be able to pull off a subdued crime film. But he does and it's truly one of the best films ever made.
In "Send Help", we see how skilled he is at directing actors. Rachel McAdams has always been very reliable. She allows herself to take risks. If 15 years ago, you told me she'd be in a Sam Raimi horror/comedy, I'm not sure I would have believed you. If I did believe you, I'd be worried it wouldn't work. Instead, watching her in this film, you see her incredible range as an actress. Not only does she hit the proper emotional beats as her character, but she also allows herself to go perfectly over the top when the script calls for it. My sincere hope is that by this time next year, she'll be remembered when the Oscar nominations are announced.
I don't know a whole lot about Dylan O'Brien. I'd heard of him previously but I'm unsure I've seen him in anything. When I heard he was cast in this against McAdams, I was a bit concerned he wouldn't have the chops to keep up with her. I am ecstatic to admit how wrong I was. Now, I don't know what exactly happened, but O'Brien is clearly channeling Bruce Campbell. I don't know if it was a choice on his part or if Raimi suggested it, but O'Brien plays the perfect heel.
O'Brien's Bradley is all bravado. When the chips are down, he's pathetic. Similar to Sean Penn's portrayal of Lockjaw in last year's "One Battle After Another", O'Brien presents Bradley as a pathetic loser. Somehow, despite all the rotten things Bradley does, you still feel bad for some of the things he goes through. That is a true testament to O'Brien's abilities as a performer. It's a true tightrope act and he succeeds enormously.
One of the things I liked so much about the film, aside from what I've already mentioned, is that neither of the main characters are black and white. There's a whole lot of gray areas in their performances and characterization. At one moment, you're rooting for one of them and, shortly thereafter, you're rooting for the other. Then you kinda hope they both get their comeuppance. In a similar fashion, Raimi explored these kinds of moral gray areas in the previously mentioned "A Simple Plan" as well as "Drag Me to Hell". It's refreshing to see a studio film explore flawed, not so great characters. It doesn't happen a lot.
In the end, what do we learn? I think films like this deliberately put you in the shoes of the protagonists to find out what you'd do in a similar situation. It's all hypothetical, of course. But, a film of any kind, even those with extreme violence and gore, posing these questions to an audience deserves all the praise that can be heaped upon it.
When the chips are down, people reveal their true nature. Some thrive under pressure, others crack. Joking aside, I'd like to think I would help Andrea in certain situations. She is probably still rotten to the core. Maybe I should see the good in her, if there is any.
But, if all else fails, there's always the poisonous berry route.
Send Help (2026)
Directed by Sam Raimi
Cast: Rachel McAdams, Dylan O'Brien, Edyll Ismail, Xavier Samuel, Chris Pang, Dennis Haysbert, Thaneth Warakulnukroh, Emma Raimi
Runtime: 114 minutes
MPAA Rating: R for strong/bloody violence and language
Rating (out of ****): ****
"Send Help" is in theaters now.
