Over the weekend the wife and I watched two films which I would recommend to others.
The first was Send Help staring Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien, directed by Sam Raimi. The story revoles around socially awkward but hardworking Linda Liddle (played by McAdams) who is that one employee in the company that does all the work but gets none of the credit. She has big dreams of moving up in the company, having been promised a promotion by the guy that runs the company. She also wants to be on the show, Survivor, to prove that she’s got what it takes to make it in the mean ol’ world. Unfortunately, The President of the company dies and his son, Bradley (played by O’Brien) takes over. He promptly takes a dislike to Linda and gives her promotion to one of his cronies. When confronted about the promotion Bradley tells Linda to work on the final report concerning a merger that is pending, and if she impresses him she can have the promotion. Oh, and she needs to join him on the business trip to answer questions about the report.
As luck would have it, the plane runs into a storm and goes down, then Linda manages to wash up on a deserted island in he middle of the Pacific, as does Bradley. Linda starts to shine, using her survival skills to keep them alive. I won’t spoil the rest but as you’d expect, Bradley learns why it’s not a good idea to be a jerk.
The second movie, Love and Monsters also stars Dylan O’Brien, as young Joel Dawson, a boy in love and separated from his girlfriend Aimee, played by Jessica Henwick, once the world collapses. This one was directed by Michael Matthews. Things start off with an asteroid heading to Earth that will wipe at all life as we know it. But we pull together, launch every rocket possible at it, and destroy the asteroid before it can cause havoc. Huzzah!
Unfortunately, the exhaust from all the rockets dumped tons of chemicals into the environment, which then mutated all the plants and animals. Humanity is nearly destroyed as a result.
Seven years later, Joel is stuck in one underground bunker, while Aimee is stuck in another. They can communicate via ham radio so they can at least talk to each other. Joel is basically the cook at his bunker, while everyone else does the hard work of staying alive. After a mutant beast beaches the bunker he lives in and eats several of the survivors, Joel decides that he doesn’t want to be without Aimee. He announces he’s going to leave the bunker and walk the eighty-five miles to where Aimee is living, despite having no real survival skills to speak of.
The rest is a comic fish-out-of-water story about Joel making his way to his true love. Along the way he finds a dog that has more survival smarts than he does, as well as some other survivors that give him a much needed crash course in not getting eaten.
I would recommend both movies, depending if you want something tense and suspenseful or a comedic apocalypse. Dylan O’Brien does a good job in both, playing very different types of characters.
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