“We’re not in the office anymore, Bradley.”

Story: Linda is the oddball of the office. Incredibly talented, incredibly quirky, and incredibly into survivalism. So when a work trip becomes a forced island retreat? Who’s the power broker now?

Scares: More survival comedy than horror.
Splat Factor: Sam Raimi? The Evil Dead guy? Oh indeed.

Subgenre: Survivor Horror With Laughs
Year Released: 2026
Remake, Sequel or OG (Original Ghoul)?: Original.

Trick or Treat?: Sam Raimi helming a island survival gross out film? I couldn’t stay away. Help starts out feeling like it’s going to be a satisfying morality play that shows the bad boss getting his comeuppance. But it ends up a messy tale that doesn’t seem to know what it wants to say.

Though I can’t blame Linda for wanting to stay. That island has everything – fruit, fish, wild game, and a freshwater spring. Not too shabby. The film is filled with gorgeous shots of the island, and brief but gloriously effective levels of gore. Though I really could have done without the copious amount of vomiting at the start of the third act.

My biggest complaint here is that Linda turns into someone who gives Annie Wilkes in Misery a run for her money. That’s something that almost had me rooting for Bradley, and his character is so reprehensible I started to get angry with the script. “Is it that bad?… Haven’t I taken good care of you?” just hits differently after watching Obsession. Rachel McAdams is just so likeable as a human being, her real life persona bleeds into the character, giving Linda more grace than she deserves.

As Linda becomes more unhinged, the whole Good For Her vibe disappears. I kept thinking that Bradley had better suddenly become a total mustache twirling villain to offset her mania. Luckily, as Bradley, Dylan O’Brien gets to unleash levels of self serving behavior rarely seen beyond Manosphere posting.

The roller-coaster of who’s actually the worst keeps rocking back and forth. Bradley wears his despicable nature proudly. Linda’s need to feel needed becomes sociopathic selfishness. The screenplay by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift seems determined to keep both characters irredeemable. Which makes for an unsatisfying watch.

The schizophrenic nature of the character arcs throughout the story refuses to allow for an effective catharsis at the end. The wishy-washy “both sides are the same actually” feels like the story searching to stretch out it’s run-time to feature length. And I stopped caring about either of them. When the climax hit? All I felt was relief it was over.

Score: 2 out of 5 pumpkins.