This weekend, Rachel McAdams stars in Send Help, a survival horror-thriller in which her character gets stranded on a deserted island with her overbearing boss (Dylan O’Brien).
Here at Watch With Us, we love McAdams. From her devastating romantic dramas to her laugh-out-loud comedies, McAdams is both a talented and versatile performer.
In honor of her latest picture, we thought we’d take a look back at her career highlights — and see where they fell on the Tomatometer.
Here are McAdams’ five best movies, ranked by Rotten Tomatoes score.
Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien Get Stranded in ‘Send Help’ Trailer
5. ‘The Family Stone’ (2005)
Rotten Tomatoes score: 52 percent
Everett Stone (Dermot Mulroney) decides to bring his new girlfriend, Meredith (Sarah Jessica Parker), home with him to meet his family over Christmas, but doing this is no easy feat. She’ll have to contend with his eccentric and fiercely overprotective parents, Sybil (Diane Keaton) and Kelly (Craig T. Nelson), and his equally loyal siblings, who dislike how awkward and uptight Meredith seems to be — particularly Everett’s younger sister, the sarcastic Amy (McAdams). As tensions mount to a boiling point, can this gaggle of disparate personalities survive the holidays?
A little corny, a little cringe, The Family Stone has defied a mixed critical reception and become something of a cult classic over the years and a Christmas staple for many. The terrific ensemble cast (which also includes Luke Wilson, Elizabeth Reaser and Claire Danes), paired with the gooey sentimentality, some zany, screwball humor and tantalizingly unrealistic characters, produces an oddly endearing holiday comedy that never goes out of style.
4. ‘About Time’ (2013)
Rotten Tomatoes score: 71 percent
Tim Lake (Domhnall Gleeson) learns an incredible secret from his father (Bill Nighy) when he turns 21 — all the men in their family are time-travelers. Though unable to change the course of history at large, they can still change the course of their own lives. So, Tim resolves to use time travel to improve his love life. When Tim eventually meets Mary (McAdams), he uses charm and his special abilities to win her heart. But as Tim’s life goes on, he slowly realizes that he can’t always use time travel to escape the ordinary problems inherent to being alive.
While riddled with some time-travel-related plot holes, you will find yourself totally won over by About Time’s irresistible charms — in large part thanks to the chemistry between McAdams and Gleeson. Despite the admittedly absurd nature of the narrative, Richard Curtis infuses pure earnest sincerity into the screenplay and direction to craft a timeless (no pun intended) romance.
3. ‘Mean Girls’ (2004)
Rotten Tomatoes score: 84 percent
Formerly homeschool student Cady Heron (Lindsay Lohan) finally enters the chaos of high school, and she realizes that teenagers are far more bestial than the lions she once knew where she grew up in Africa. After meeting Janice (Lizzy Caplan) and Damien (Daniel Franzese), Cady quickly learns how to act, how to dress and about all the various cliques — like the “Plastics,” led by the domineering Regina George (McAdams). When Cady agrees to befriend Regina to “take her down” on behalf of Janice, Cady unwittingly becomes swept up in the cheap thrills of popularity.
Written by Tina Fey (who infuses her signature acerbic wit), Mean Girls still endures as one of the best American high school movies of all time. Funny, surprisingly sentimental and full of too many viral one-liners to name, the movie is a coming-of-age staple as well as a crucial early-career launchpad for actors like Caplan, McAdams and Amanda Seyfried.
2. ‘Game Night’ (2018)
Rotten Tomatoes score: 85 percent
Game obsessives Annie (McAdams) and Max (Jason Bateman) meet and fall in love through their shared love of all things playable, hosting weekly game nights with their other suburban couple friends. But when Max’s showboat older brother Brooks (Kyle Chandler) decides to take things up a notch by hiring a murder mystery party, the game gets too real when they realize that Brooks has actually been kidnapped by thugs. As the night gets more and more chaotic, Annie and Max find themselves involved in a game that has more rules than they know how to follow.
Game Night proved that McAdams still possesses the comedy chops she once flaunted in Mean Girls, and that the actress should be using these comedic gifts far more frequently than she’s allowed to. Of course, McAdams isn’t the only standout in this fantastic ensemble cast — Billy Magnussen, Lamorne Morris, and, especially, Jesse Plemons all get big laughs in this fast-paced, cleverly edited crime caper.
1. ‘Spotlight’ (2015)
Rotten Tomatoes score: 97 percent
Based on a series of exposes published by The Boston Globe, Spotlight takes place in the early 2000s and follows a team of journalists at the Globe. This “Spotlight team” is assigned to report on a disgraced priest who’s been accused of sexually abusing countless young boys. Led by Walter “Robby” Robinson (Michael Keaton), Walter and his reporters Sacha Pfeiffer (McAdams), Michael Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo) and Matt Caroll (Brian d’Arcy James) ultimately come to realize they are investigating a decades-long scandal of abuse cover-ups within the Roman Catholic Church.
This Best Picture-winning investigative drama is both sobering and riveting — a slow-burn pressure-cooker of tension, control and mounting revelations that will leave you in a frustrating state of outrage. While Spotlight’s conclusion may not be the most cathartic, the filmmakers intentionally resist glorifying the reporters and indulging in platitudes. Instead, the film unfurls its absorbing narrative with grace, anchored by a top-notch ensemble cast.
