Warning: This post contains spoilers for Send Help.

By the savage final act of the blood-soaked cinematic thrill ride that is Send Help, now in theaters, the relationship between nepo baby CEO Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien) and his long-suffering employee Linda Liddle has been turned so inside out that the characters introduced at the start of the battle-of-wills horror-comedy are scarcely recognizable.

After being marooned on a desert island when their private plane crashes somewhere in the Gulf of Thailand during a business trip, the dynamic between the adversarial pair is rapidly inverted. Linda already harbored a grudge against Bradley because he had passed her over for the VP position promised to her by his late father in favor of promoting one of his unworthy former frat brothers. But while slick C-Suite executive Bradley was in control in the real world, Linda, the woman he considered a mousy nuisance of a subordinate, turns out to be a self-trained survival expert with an unexpectedly vengeful nature. Here, Linda wields all the power. And she fully exploits it, forcing Bradley into submission as her (nearly literally) neutered companion.

Directed by horror legend Sam Raimi (The Evil Dead, ) from a script by screenwriting duo Damian Shannon and Mark Swift (, Friday the 13th), Send Help has been touted as a blend of Misery and Castaway ramped up by Raimi’s signature gross-out humor. But the movie’s twist ending also shares some striking resemblances with that of another recent buzzy social satire: .

In writer-director Ruben Östlund’s 2022 Best Picture nominee, a small group of superyacht guests and crew members find themselves marooned on a remote island after a pirate attack sinks their luxury cruise ship. Isolated from society in a place where wealth and status mean nothing, the power balance between the entitled ultra-rich and the sole survivor with practical skills, overlooked toilet manager Abigail (Dolly de Leon), instantly shifts.

As time passes, Abigail evolves into a tyrannical leader, using her control over essential supplies to coerce her fellow survivors into obedience and establish a transactional barter system—even going so far as to exchange resources for sexual favors. One day, fashion model Yaya (Charlbi Dean) and Abigail decide to explore the island and discover their beach is actually adjacent to a luxury resort. Realizing civilization has been within reach all along, Yaya is thrilled and begins celebrating their imminent rescue. But she doesn’t realize that Abigail, who is apparently reluctant to give up her newfound privilege and return to normal life, is sneaking up behind her with a large rock. The movie ends on an intentionally ambiguous note, forcing viewers to decide for themselves whether Abigail carried out murdering Yaya to maintain her authority.

Send Help hits many of the same notes in Bradley and Linda’s dynamic. After weeks of subjugation at Linda’s hands, Bradley discovers that his fiancée and her boat guide had come to the island to rescue them—but Linda killed the pair to avoid returning to the real world. Then, Bradley makes his way to a part of the island Linda made him believe was unreachable where he finds a fully-stocked luxury mansion.

Bradley is desperate to escape his keeper’s clutches. Linda, on the other hand, is still not eager to go home. Following a fierce brawl, Linda realizes Bradley’s overtures about living out their lives together on the island are insincere, and she beats him to death with a golf club.

The film ends by flashing forward to show Linda eventually built a raft, got herself rescued, and went on to fabricate a heroic story about her time stranded on the island as the plane crash’s lone survivor. She now lives a rich and entitled life, capitalizing on her reputation as a courageous and intrepid castaway to adopt the same insufferable, privileged persona she once detested.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely, we suppose.