{"id":710077,"date":"2026-02-02T23:10:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-02T20:10:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/send-help-star-dylan-obrien-breaks-down-his-surprising-take-on-the-bloody-ending\/"},"modified":"2026-02-02T23:10:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-02T20:10:12","slug":"send-help-star-dylan-obrien-breaks-down-his-surprising-take-on-the-bloody-ending","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/send-help-star-dylan-obrien-breaks-down-his-surprising-take-on-the-bloody-ending\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Send Help\u2019 Star Dylan O\u2019Brien Breaks Down His Surprising Take on the Bloody Ending"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\t[This story contains major spoilers for <\/strong>Send Help<\/em><\/strong>.]<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tSend Help<\/em> star Dylan O\u2019Brien is not going to say what you think he\u2019s going to say about the victor of Sam Raimi\u2019s deserted island duel.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tIn a previous conversation with THR<\/em>, O\u2019Brien stated that he doesn\u2019t buy into the common philosophy among actors that one must function like a defense attorney for their antagonists. He certainly empathizes with his acclaimed villainous characters in River Gallo\u2019s Ponyboi<\/em> (2024) and Jan Komasa\u2019s Anniversary<\/em> (2025), but he doesn\u2019t necessarily feel an obligation to justify their unforgivable behavior or paint them as victims. That mindset remains especially true when it comes to his smarmy CEO character, Bradley Preston, in Send Help<\/em>. (Major spoilers ahead.)<\/em>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tCase in point, he sides with Rachel McAdams\u2019 Linda Liddle, a strategy and planning exec for Bradley\u2019s inherited consulting firm. O\u2019Brien\u2019s position is all the more surprising when you consider that McAdams\u2019 Survivor<\/em> enthusiast character ultimately kills Bradley, as well as his fianc\u00e9e (Edyll Ismail\u2019s Zuri) and a local skipper, who was merely helping the latter search for Bradley and any other survivors of his company\u2019s plane crash in the Gulf of Thailand.<\/p>\n

\n\tO\u2019Brien specifically feels for the fact that Linda is a widowed survivor of an abusive, alcoholic husband. He also sympathizes for her after Bradley refuses to honor his late father\u2019s promised promotion to his most valuable employee of the last seven years. Instead, he decides to exile her to a satellite office because her dowdy aesthetic doesn\u2019t suit his boys\u2019 club mentality. But before that can happ<\/a>en, Bradley is convinced to bring her on the fateful business trip<\/a> to Bangkok in an effort to protect an imminent merger. That reluctant decision to include Linda saved Bradley from a more immedia<\/a>te death since he washed ashore on the same tropical island with a survivalist.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cPersonally, I ride for Linda. I have been very surprised to hear how many people are like, \u2018Well, Linda is a murderer.\u2019 And I\u2019m like, \u2018But she was abused,\u2019\u201d O\u2019Brien tells The Hollywood Reporter<\/em> in support of Raimi\u2019s most critically well-received film alongside 2004\u2019s Spider-Man 2<\/em>. \u201cI love that it isn\u2019t a black-and-white dynamic. We were conscious while making it that you may be siding with Bradley over Linda at some point in the film, but it\u2019s very interesting to see that scale tip back and forth. It\u2019s one of the most fun parts about the movie.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWritten by Damian Shannon and Mark Swift, Send Help<\/em> sets itself up a lot like Breaking Bad<\/em> in that you have a highly sympathetic main character who\u2019s been unable to reach their utmost potential, either through systemic barriers or their own self-sabotage. Both stories then become a test of how long our initial sympathies can last once roles reverse and immoral acts accumulate.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe dealbreaker for a number of viewers, including this writer, is Linda\u2019s aforementioned double murder of Zuri and her local skipper\/tour guide to prevent a return to the mainland. At first, Linda delayed her and Bradley\u2019s rescue in order to prove her worth to her new boss and guarantee her promotion as soon as they\u2019re back in the States. But her ongoing interference evolved into a version of Lima Syndrome, having developed feelings for her \u201cnew sweetie\u201d she was holding captive. (She previously referred to her pet bird as Sweetie.)<\/p>\n

\n\tThere are still plenty of Linda defenders besides O\u2019Brien. He says the majority of the Send Help crew<\/em> are \u201cTeam Linda stans.\u201d But he hopes that the audience\u2019s response doesn\u2019t become overly tribal because the film was never meant to be a gendered showdown. (Personally, I don\u2019t align with either person.)<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI hope that there\u2019s no team anyone<\/em>, to be honest, and I also hope that there\u2019s no gender factor in it,\u201d O\u2019Brien admits. \u201cSam and Rachel were very conscious about not wanting to be too heavy handed [regarding] women versus men in the workplace. It\u2019s more universal than that. Anybody can relate to being on the short side of this dynamic in a human society. Again, it\u2019s where I get sympathy for Linda.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBelow, during a spoiler conversation with THR<\/em>, O\u2019Brien also discusses how he approached one of his favorite scenes in which Bradley is drugged and temporarily paralyzed.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t***<\/p>\n

\n\tSend Help<\/em><\/strong>\u2019s Bradley Preston seems like he\u2019s cut from the same cloth as Vincenzo from <\/strong>Ponyboi<\/em><\/strong> and Josh Taylor from <\/strong>Anniversary<\/em><\/strong>. Maybe this is just me trying to create an \u201cera\u201d of work, but do you consider these guys to be birds of a feather?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s so interesting. An antagonistic character in a movie like Send Help<\/em> could have so easily stopped at that first dimension\u2019s dynamic between Bradley and Linda and rode out the rest of the movie on it. But this movie doesn\u2019t do that. It evolves. It really gets into the weeds of what got Bradley and Linda there, but I don\u2019t necessarily think that makes things forgivable.<\/p>\n

\n\tOne of my favorite things about the film is how you\u2019re constantly questioning the character dynamics. Is he a bad guy? Is she bad? Are they both bad? Should I be rooting for either of them? Am I rooting for both of them? Should I pick one? Should I pick neither? <\/em>Hopefully, the audience also questions these things when weighing their own perspective on the characters.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\t(L-R) Dylan O\u2019Brien as Bradley Preston and Rachal McAdams as Linda Liddle in Sam Raimi\u2019s Send<\/em> Help<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBrook Rushton\/20th Century Studios<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tI imagine that you can relate to Linda at the start of the movie. You previously told me how you were <\/strong>dismissed<\/strong> or belittled early in your career if you ever tried to speak up about something important to you. Thus, did you base Bradley on any of those people who disregarded your voice back in the day?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tI wouldn\u2019t say that specifically, but everybody can draw from an experience where they were a Linda and dealt with a Bradley. Bradley was still a fun role to the piece at hand, and I really understood the assignment in terms of this particular world. I really love funny antagonistic characters. I love a character who\u2019s kind of an idiot, but also not dumb. I love how Bradley can be written off so easily, and while he does have [undesirable] qualities and a thoughtlessness in the way he moves through the world, he\u2019s not unintelligent. He has to reach down into the bag to counter Linda once his back is against the wall. So it\u2019s really fun and interesting to see how he does that and what he relies on \u2014 and vice versa with her character too. I just loved seeing their individual depths unfold and the ways in which they instinctually move to survive.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen you first met Sam Raimi, he wore a bag over his head for 20 minutes. Did he pull off any other memorable bits or gags throughout the process?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tYeah, he would occasionally do really funny stuff with the crew. He\u2019d have bits that he\u2019d write or do. He\u2019d have a song and dance teed up, which he did on one of our first days of filming the office stuff. He\u2019s a very funny person, a very cartoonish person and a very good comedic writer. I would ask him about it all because I really felt like I understood him, and he would say, \u201cOh really? It\u2019s just deflection because I\u2019m nervous.\u201d He said that his bits come from the very human place of nervousness, and I found that so interesting because he doesn\u2019t strike you as nervous at all when you\u2019re working with him. So it\u2019s more of an icebreaker for himself, and I\u2019m not sure if he\u2019s aware that it also serves as one for everyone else. It\u2019s very comforting.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\t(L-R) Dylan O\u2019Brien as Bradley Preston and Rachel McAdams as Linda Liddle in Sam Raimi\u2019s Send<\/em> Help<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBrook Rushton\/20th Century Studios<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tLet\u2019s get into spoilers. <\/strong>Send Help<\/em><\/strong> puts the audience on Linda\u2019s side at the jump, but as the movie goes along, it wants you to question your allegiance to her. After all, she consistently prevented her and Bradley\u2019s rescue throughout the movie. Linda then killed Bradley\u2019s fianc\u00e9e and a local skipper because she wanted to keep him captive longer. Yes, he drugged her food, but he accurately sensed she was holding him captive. She nursed him at the start, but he also saved her life when she nearly fell off the cliff. In the end, do you think Bradley got an undeserved fate?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tShe could have just broken his nose at the end. (Laughs<\/em>.) We don\u2019t fully know what happened. That\u2019s part of what\u2019s fun about the movie. For me, personally, I ride for Linda. It\u2019s not that I don\u2019t also ride for Bradley, but it\u2019s been really interesting to hear the various reactions that people have. I have been very surprised to hear how many people are like, \u201cWell, Linda is a murderer.\u201d And I\u2019m like, \u201cWell, yeah, but she was abused.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThere\u2019s so many interesting pieces of these characters that provide a certain texture to their choices and make it quite debatable. It\u2019s clearly already drawing sides, but I love that it isn\u2019t so clear cut. I love that it isn\u2019t a black-and-white dynamic. We were conscious while making it that you may be siding with Bradley over Linda at some point in the film, but it\u2019s very interesting to see that scale tip back and forth. It\u2019s one of the most fun parts about the movie.<\/p>\n

\n\tLinda murdering Bradley\u2019s fianc\u00e9e and her local tour guide, I don\u2019t know how she comes back from that. During the coda, she pretends that she was the only plane crash survivor so she clearly knows that telling the real story would implicate her. Technically speaking, that makes Bradley the victim.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tBut Linda has lived her life as somebody who nobody pays an ounce of attention or respect to whatsoever, so I get why she desperately doesn\u2019t want to go back to that world. What are you willing to forgive? What are you going to hang your hat on?<\/em> She goes to barbaric places, which is what\u2019s really fun about the premise involving these characters. It\u2019s about how much sympathy you have for her, and so I wouldn\u2019t want to go back [to her previous life] either. She\u2019d be rescued and taken back to the prison that they\u2019d already set for her [in a satellite office]. They never paid mind for how they treated her in civilization, and she knows that will be her fate again.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tDylan O\u2019Brien as Bradley Preston in Sam Raimi\u2019s Send Help.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of 20th Century Studios<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tI mentioned how Bradley drugged her to give himself an opening to raft his way out of captivity \u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tHe took her cup! (Laughs<\/em>.)<\/p>\n

\n\tBut I failed to mention that Linda saw Bradley\u2019s drugging and raised him a drugging of her own, one in which she convinced him that she was castrating him. Your teary eyes really sold Bradley\u2019s frozen state of terror.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tIt was a fun assignment. To be honest, I did not think about what the hell I was even going to be doing during that scene until we got there that day. It was such an involved scene for Rachel as well, so we started with her the whole first half of the day. I then got my feet under me and figured out what my place in the scene was going to be. It became a very fun ask; any actor would enjoy that. It\u2019s a blast to be trapped within your own body and react to this psychological torture. You\u2019re supposed to show utter paralysis and not be able to move any muscle in a very zany tonality. I love that scene. It\u2019s one of my favorite scenes, but it\u2019s not something that you can really prepare for.<\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019m so curious how the responses by gender will ultimately shake out. I asked the female chaperone at my screening who she ultimately rooted for, and she said Linda without any hesitation. You\u2019re more Team Linda than I expected, but I do think there\u2019s going to be some Bradley sympathizers, largely because the fianc\u00e9e and local captain were innocents.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tYeah, I just think they both have points. They\u2019ve both made bad choices. It just depends more on how much you can forgive. I hope that there\u2019s no team anyone<\/em>, to be honest, and I also hope that there\u2019s no gender factor in it. Sam and Rachel were very conscious about not wanting to be too heavy handed [regarding] women versus men in the workplace. It\u2019s more universal than that. It\u2019s a human thing. Anybody can relate to being on the short side of this dynamic in a human society. Again, it\u2019s where I get sympathy for Linda.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen [Bradley\u2019s fianc\u00e9e and her tour guide] tell Linda to get onto the boat and leave her mangoes because she\u2019s not going to need them anymore, you see her grasp onto her backpack that she weaved and the food that she gathered herself. You can see her remember how that [old] world didn\u2019t treat her the way it treats others. She drew the short straw in that version of her existence. So it\u2019s interesting to put her character in this new scenario and watch how far she\u2019ll go to hang onto it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tI love watching flawed characters. I love that both of these characters can be the protagonist and easily be the antagonist. I love movies<\/a> like that. They\u2019re rarer and rarer nowadays.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\t(L-R) Rachal McAdams as Linda Liddle and Dylan O\u2019Brien as Bradley Preston in Send Help.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy of 20th Century Studios<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tHow much debate was there on set?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tThe crew got into it a lot. The crew had a lot of teams and sides, but it was mostly all Team Linda stans. Rachel and I just tried to calibrate the piece. We were trying to earn each tip of the scale. No matter which way you turn with the characters, our focus was on you buying it and believing where they\u2019re coming from. So, hopefully the changing of allegiances was achieved. At times, it was my job to be like, \u201cWell, why would Bradley promote you?\u201d He\u2019s pretty thoughtless and harsh about it.<\/p>\n

\n\tI don\u2019t think there\u2019s any reality where Bradley honors his father\u2019s promise to promote Linda because we later found out about how much he resented his absent father.<\/strong> (Bradley\u2019s father is portrayed photographically by Raimi\u2019s creative soulmate, Bruce Campbell.)<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tI love the resentment of the father theory, and I\u2019m sure that could be a layer for him as well. But I came at it from a place of, \u201cI have my phobias about your existence, but it\u2019s nothing personal. This is how this works. I can\u2019t shepherd you into a room and think that people are going to be like, \u2018Hell yeah.\u2019\u201d He subscribed to a men\u2019s club dynamic where it\u2019s nothing personal, but he could have been a lot more sensitive, let alone been someone who tries to counter that nature of the business world.<\/p>\n

\n\tPrior to her being drugged, Linda says something about how Bradley must miss his fianc\u00e9e, and his response wasn\u2019t the most convincing. What did you make of that?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tTo be honest, in delivering that line, Bradley was more so observing whether Linda was ingesting the poison or not. The line was either an auto response, or he didn\u2019t even hear the question because he\u2019s thinking, \u201cIs she taking the poison?\u201d But I did always feel like there\u2019s a sense of remorse in his delivery, as in maybe he hasn\u2019t always been the best partner to this person.<\/p>\n

\n\tWith you being a die-hard baseball fan, it must have been a thrill to work with Pedro Cerrano (Dennis Haysbert) from Major League<\/em> in that early office sequence.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tYeah, good catch. One of the first things I said to him was, \u201cDude, I love you in Major<\/em> League<\/em>.\u201d And he was like, \u201cOh, thanks, man. I really love the Maze Runner <\/em>movies.\u201d And I was like, \u201cWhat!? You saw the Maze Runner<\/em> movies?\u201d And he was like, \u201cOh, I see everything.\u201d So I geeked out about that. He rocks.<\/p>\n

\n\tYour Indie Spirit nomination for <\/strong>Twinless<\/em><\/strong> is cool, but I\u2019m sure you\u2019d agree that <\/strong>Twinless<\/em><\/strong> being number one on my 2025 top ten list is equally cool.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\t(Laughs<\/em>.) Twinless<\/em> being number one on anyone\u2019s list, I\u2019ll take it. Trust<\/em> me<\/em>. I appreciate that so much, man.<\/p>\n

\n\tI have a very specific question. Dennis (James Sweeney) told Rocky at the start that he\u2019d never broken a bone before, and Rocky responded that he\u2019d now jinxed himself. Dennis then showed up to the final scene with his arm in a sling. Do you think he actually jinxed himself and genuinely broke a bone? Or was he just going for a manipulative sympathy play to get his friendship with Roman back?<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tI definitely never viewed it as a sympathy play. The way that James, as a filmmaker, tells stories, if a seed is planted, then there is going to be a payoff at some point. I also feel like James believes in humans. So I think we would both agree that the sling wasn\u2019t a manipulative tactic there at the end. That was Dennis in his rawest form.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t***<\/strong>
<\/strong>Send Help is now playing in movie theaters<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

If you liked the article, do not forget to share it with your friends. Follow us on\u00a0Google News<\/a><\/span>\u00a0too, click on the star and choose us from your favorites.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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If you want to read more Like this articles, you can visit our Social Media category.<\/a><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

[This story contains major spoilers for Send Help.] Send Help star Dylan O\u2019Brien is not going to say what you think he\u2019s going to say about the victor of Sam Raimi\u2019s deserted island duel.\u00a0 In a previous conversation with THR, O\u2019Brien stated that he doesn\u2019t buy into the common philosophy among actors that one must…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":710078,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/GettyImages-2257493717-H-2026.jpg?w=1296&h=730&crop=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[56374,76374,7910,160487,154066],"class_list":["post-710077","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-dylan-obrien","tag-rachel-mcadams","tag-sam-raimi","tag-send-help","tag-twinless"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710077","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=710077"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/710077\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/710078"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=710077"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=710077"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=710077"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}