There's something deeply satisfying about watching a fed-up worker finally snap. And apparently, Hollywood has noticed.
Two new films — Park Chan-wook's No Other Choice and Sam Raimi's Send Help — are tapping into something raw in the cultural mood right now. Both follow ordinary workers pushed to extraordinary, violent extremes: one a laid-off man who starts eliminating his job competition, literally; the other an overlooked employee who finally gets the upper hand on her nightmare boss when they're stranded together on a deserted island. Part dark comedy, part horror, both are arriving at exactly the right moment.
Because for many people, work feels pretty terrible right now.
The Numbers Don't Lie
Last year was the worst year for hiring since 2003 outside of a recession — U.S. employers added just 181,000 jobs, compared to over 1.4 million the year before. As of January, nearly 1.8 million Americans have been searching for work for more than six months. And those who do have jobs? Many are gripping them for dear life, too anxious about layoffs and AI disruption to even think about leaving.
Job cuts announced in January hit their highest monthly total since 2009 to start the year. The so-called "quits rate" — a measure of how confident workers feel about leaving their jobs voluntarily — has stayed stubbornly low. People aren't leaving because they don't feel like they have anywhere to go.
Into this climate walk Man-su and Linda. And audiences are eating it up.
The Catharsis of the Extreme
In No Other Choice (adapted from Donald Westlake's 1997 novel The Ax), Lee Byung-hun plays a middle-aged man laid off from a specialty papermaker who, after months of failed job applications, begins killing off rival candidates to improve his odds. It's absurd. It's also, somehow, deeply relatable — a twisted funhouse mirror held up to the brutal zero-sum reality of today's job market, where LinkedIn sees roughly 10,000 applications submitted every minute.
Send Help takes a different angle. Rachel McAdams plays Linda, a worker who's been passed over for promotions, had her ideas stolen, and spent years surviving a bro-culture workplace run by a nepo-baby CEO (Dylan O'Brien). When they end up stranded together after a plane crash, the power dynamic flips entirely — and Linda is not feeling merciful.
Workplace psychology professor Alicia Grandey, co-author of Emotionally Charged: How to Lead in the New World of Work, explains the appeal simply: these films take "feelings that many, many people have to an extreme, so that you know it's not real. You can still revel in that power shift, you can still relate to the character, and recognize it's over-the-top fantasy — but absolutely, it's catharsis, it's venting."
And then you walk out of the theater, and your actual job doesn't seem quite as unbearable.
More Than Just Escapism
What makes both films stick, though, is that they don't really let you off the hook with a triumphant ending. Man-su gets the job he killed for — and finds himself the only human in a sterile, automated factory, pumping his fists before his expression fades into hollow resignation. Even winning feels like losing.
Linda closes Send Help with a piece of advice that lands somewhere between empowering and bleak: "No help is coming, so you'd better start saving yourself."
That's not exactly a feel-good message. But it might be an honest one. In a job market where applications disappear into black holes, and AI is reshaping entire industries overnight, the fantasy isn't really about revenge. It's about feeling like you have some control over something that feels deeply out of your hands.
We can't all strand our bosses on a desert island. But for two hours, it's awfully nice to watch someone who can.