Ummm, Let's Talk About Mean Girls Legends Rachel McAdams And Lacey Chabert Making Movies With The Same Plot

SPOILER ALERT! This contains big spoilers for both Send Help and Hallmark’s Lost in Paradise.

Rachel McAdams has made a name for herself over the past couple of decades for projects like The Notebook and Spotlight, while Lacey Chabert has become the queen of Hallmark. However, these actresses may always be known best for starring in Mean Girls — one of the best movies of the 2000s. A strange thing happened recently, when they both released 2026 movies within weeks of each other, and we need to talk about how McAdams’ Send Help has the same plot as Chabert’s latest Hallmark offering, Lost in Paradise.

Send Help won the weekend box office when it premiered, as critics hailed Sam Raimi’s return to the horror genre (CinemaBlend’s review gave it 4 out of 5 stars). It’s been called a throwback to the Evil Dead era and the perfect companion movie to Rachel McAdams’ Red Eye, so how in the world could this gory, unhinged, homicidal survival horror have anything in common with one of Hallmark’s predictably quaint romances? I’m glad you asked.

Let’s Start With The Plots Of Send Help And Lost In Paradise

It’s wild that the actresses who played two of the Plastics in Mean Girls — Rachel McAdams’ iconic villain Regina George and Lacey Chabert’s Gretchen Wieners — would be starring in such wildly different movies that from their synopses sound like they could be the same film. In fact, when I started writing a different article about Send Help, I immediately got déjà vu from something I’d seen on the Hallmark movie schedule.

Just like Lost in Paradise, Send Help was described as two people getting stranded on a deserted island after a plane crash, with tension building as they work together to survive. After seeing both of the movies, I can confirm that of course the movies are wildly different in tone. One has way more blood, vomit and eye-gouging, while the other inexplicably throws in a shark and possible pirates. And that tension building between the two sets of castaways? Very different kinds. However …

Send Help Had Way More Similarities To Lacey Chabert’s Hallmark Movie Than I Was Ready For

I was surprised to find that there were some pretty notable similarities between the two movies. For instance:

• Both movies saw their characters traveling overseas for work when a storm caused their plane to go down. While Send Help’s Laura Liddle and Bradley Preston (Dylan O’Brien) had a pretty hostile employee-employer relationship, Lost in Paradise’s main couple, Sophia and Max (Ian Harding), were strangers.
• In both movies, the guys insist their best first move is to make a “HELP” sign out of branches on the beach, though only in Send Help does Bradley misspell his “HEPL.” Also, Bradley and Max both neglect to protect themselves from the sun and get burned, while Laura and Sophia do not (the Plastics would never).
• Both Laura and Max are Survivor super fans, with Rachel McAdams’ character having auditioned for the show and prepared extensively to survive in the conditions she finds herself in. However, despite claiming to have seen every episode, Lost in Paradise's male lead doesn’t contribute nearly as much to his and Sophia’s predicament.
• Laura and Sophia also both weave super-fetch hats out of plant fronds, and they each also fashion weapons that they use for spearfishing.

• Both Lost in Paradise and Send Help have a scene in which the man cooks a romantic dinner for his fellow island-dweller, with Laura and Sophia each trying to fancy up their look by sporting a tropical flower behind their ear. This works out better for Lacey Chabert’s character, as Max is a celebrated chef. Bradley, meanwhile, takes the opportunity to poison Laura and try to escape on his makeshift raft. Oh, that’s another similarity — both flicks include makeshift rafts that don’t work as well as intended.
• Sophia and Laura also end up letting their guard down, opening up to Max and Bradley, respectively, about why their previous relationships failed.
• Both women also have pets whose fates I questioned at one point or another in the movie. For Laura, it was a bird, who we see her reunited with at the end, while Sophia’s dog Gianni goes missing for longer than I was comfortable with during Lost in Paradise.
• This is a pretty big spoiler, so I’ll keep it semi-vague (and feel free to skip ahead), but in both movies the stranded couple ended up being a lot closer to civilization than they realized.
• Finally, both movies have a flash-forward sequence at the end that shows our leading ladies living their best lives after going through quite a transformation during their time as castaways.

Send Help Felt Like It Could Easily Have Slipped Into Rom-Com Territory

While Send Help was definitively a violent horror film that saw Bradley being personally victimized by Laura, there were several scenes where I thought they might just bond over their shared experience enough for romance to bloom. Critics validated my response in their reviews, with Eric Eisenberg writing for CinemaBlend that “the premise could easily veer into romantic comedy/drama territory.”

Mashable noted that “some scenes hint at an enemies-to-lovers arc, where, forced to survive together, Linda and Bradley find the good in each other, despite their differences,” while IGN’s critic wrote that, “From moment to moment, it’s never clear whether these two are going to kill or kiss each other.”

Hallmark Movies Sometimes Feel Like They Could Easily Veer Into Horror

The reverse is also true, and while I never really felt like Lacey Chabert’s character was in danger with Max, this wouldn’t be the first time I’ve found parallels between horror plots and Hallmark movies. In fact, Hallmark’s 2022 flick Love in the Villa started out surprisingly similar to that year’s horror hit Barbarian.

It’s one of those things you can’t overthink if you like Hallmark movies, because it can be really distracting to realize how easily some of those sweet romances could take a dark turn. During one recent Hallmark binge, my teenager was actually shouting horror movie-style at the woman on TV to, “Share your location!” as she was swept away by a sexy stranger for an adventure in an unfamiliar foreign land. It’s the Hallmark version of, “Don’t go in there!”

I am quite amused at the fact that Mean Girls queens Rachel McAdams and Lacey Chabert both have movies out now about being stranded with a guy on a deserted island, regardless of how different they actually are — especially because they’re more alike than you might think at first. Send Help is in theaters now, while Lost in Paradise can be streamed on Hallmark+.