This weekend, Rachel McAdams returns to the big screen in Sam Raimi’s Send Help, a darkly comedic thriller that has garnered the actress some of the best reviews of her career. Since rising to fame in 2004’s Mean Girls, McAdams has developed a filmography that spans comedy, drama, and everything in between. However, if you want to revisit a film where she has to match wits with a male co-star, Wes Craven’s psychological thriller Red Eye could be right up your alley if Send Help delivered the goods for you.

In Red Eye, McAdams is a plane with Cillian Murphy, but the outcome proves to be much different than the scenario in Send Help. However, in its own way, it proves to be very satisfying and solidifies early on that McAdams was a star who could take on any task thrown at her.

Directed by Craven from a screenplay by Carl Ellsworth with story credit from Ellsworth and Dan Foos, Red Eye is a psychological thriller that follows a hotel manager named Lisa Reisert (McAdams) who finds herself involved in an assassination plot by a terrorist named Jackson Rippner (Murphy). The twist, as it were, is that most of these revelations take place while they are both on board a red-eye flight to Miami, which further escalates the tension. Letting anyone know about her predicament could prove dangerous because Jackson informs Lisa that a hitman is in place to murder her father, Joe (Brian Cox), should she not follow instructions. Lisa becomes the focus of this assassination attempt because she just so happens to be a hotel manager at the location where their target, the United States Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security, happens to be staying.

‘Red Eye’ Sends McAdams On Another Rough Plane Trip

Red Eye proves to be a very solid bait-and-switch movie. The initial interaction between Lisa and Jackson at the hotel bar plays like a romantic comedy meet-cute between the two characters. There is a natural likability that McAdams exudes in these early scenes, and Murphy, who may appear like something isn’t right at first glance, can disarm the audience with his own charms. The pair have an effortless chemistry, and their early encounters nearly make the audience forget they’re seated for a thriller. Craven, who is arguably the master of suspense, shows a strong hand at directing conversations between two characters that are suitably cute and flirty. It helps that he trusts his pairing and just simply lets his actors do the work.

McAdams was coming off a meteoric rise thanks to Mean Girls, The Notebook, and Wedding Crashers, mixing natural talent with an innate likable nature that made her the perfect choice to portray Lisa. Murphy, on the other hand, was less of a household name, but his most notable work didn’t suggest he could pull this off naturally. He was known mostly for his role in 2002’s 28 Days Later, and the very summer Red Eye was released, he portrayed Jonathan Crane/Scarecrow in Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins. The latter was more of a villainous turn that should’ve made moviegoers suspicious of his appearance in Red Eye, but Craven and Murphy found the right amount of charm in Jackson to fool the audience just as much as he’s fooling Lisa.

Most of the action in Red Eye transpires when Lisa and Jackson find themselves seated side by side. While initially surprised and excited, all of this comes crashing down when Jackson makes his true intentions known, leaving Lisa in an impossible situation. This scenario allows the two actors to play off of each other wonderfully once again. McAdams’ fear is palpable, but she has to keep it mostly in check because of the threats Jackson has made. For his part, Murphy is calculated and controlled in his menacing of Lisa. This isn’t an over-the-top villain by any means. Murphy is perfectly dialed in with his intenstions and McAdams matches pitch by portraying an understanding of the danger but also conveying that her mind is constantly thinking of ways to get out of it.

That’s not to say that there aren’t moments when Jackson doesn’t lose his cool. Take a scene when Lisa attempts to signal for help while using the airplane bathroom. It feels like Lisa may have found a way out until Jackson discovers her and sees what he’s doing. He lets out a sudden snap of aggression against her that indicates that there is rage beneath the stillness. This is proven more palpably when Lisa tries to send a message inside a self-help book that she previously gave to a fellow passenger. It’s a sudden jolt when Jackson headbutts her to the point of knocking her out right in her seat without any of the other passengers knowing. It’s chillingly effective because of the combination of his level of calm and his boldness.

All of this happens for Lisa to regain her strength. When the plane finally lands, Lisa, with a sense of determined focus, reveals that she was attacked and raped two years prior. It’s in this moment that McAdams sells the flip in Lisa and that she WILL turn the tables on her captor and won’t be a victim when she vows to Jackson that she promised herself that would never happen again. After she stabs Jackson in the throat with a ballpoint pen, gets his phone, and flees the plane, she is now in control, and McAdams gets to play another layer to the character. From potential meet-cute rom-com lead to victim and now determined survivor, McAdams hits all of these notes perfectly in this highly entertaining game of cat and mouse. Even when the film becomes more of a standard Hollywood thriller of chases and moments that need you to suspend your disbelief once the action exits the plane, McAdams grounds these final scenes in a way that makes it all believable. The audience is fully in her corner and rooting for her, and it’s worth cheering for once Jackson is no longer in control and Lisa is.

From Craven to Raimi Projects, a McAdams Thriller Hits

Red Eye, probably thanks in large part to McAdams’ rising star power, was successful when it was released, grossing $57.8 million domestically and $95.5 million worldwide on a $26 million budget. Critics were also impressed, giving the film a 79 percent on Rotten Tomatoes with a consensus that reads, “With solid performances and tight direction from Wes Craven, Red Eye is a brisk, economic thriller.” Roger Ebert, in his review, applauded the performances of the two leads and said McAdams was “so convincing because she keeps [her performance] at ground level and she remains plausible even when the action ratchets up around her.”

It’s fitting that McAdams gets her thriller cred working with Craven because her road to Raimi seems natural. True, she took on a supporting role when he directed Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, but with Send Help, she gets to take the lead in a crazy Raimi hybrid of dark humor and thriller without missing a single beat.

After checking out Send Help on the big screen, head home and revisit or check out Red Eye for the first time. Despite its success, it’s a bit of an underrated thriller that deserves much more credit than it receives.

Send Help opens in theaters nationwide January 30.

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