Self Reliance

His life in a rut, Tommy accepts the chance to win $1 million playing a reality game show on the Dark Web, where he has to survive for 30 days as hunters try to kill him. Since the hunters can only attack him when he's alone, Tommy just has to stay with another person the whole time in order to win. Unfortunately, none of his friends and family believe that the game is even real.

In a nutshell, this is a film built off of some good ideas, maybe too many good ideas, all of which are fumbled by a bad execution.

This was apparently mostly a “COVID film” which means it was funded in the “desperately hungry for new content” era of the early years of the Pandemic, which allowed a bunch of cooped-up actors/directors (read: attention whores, ask Olivier) to make small “indie-feeling” films in their own homes, and in the homes of friends, all of them attempting some nonsense profundity about the need for human connection, which ultimately end up sounding like they’re trying to create a narrative where they can justify their ignoring of the health and well-being of the people around them, all so that they can go back to maskless (and guiltless) indoor brunches in full view of the salivating hordes of paparazzi.

The story goes like this…

Tommy (Writer/Director/Star Jake Johnson) is a pretty typical sad-sack white guy working a dead-end office job. He lives with his mom, and is still lamenting the end of his 23-year relationship two years ago with a girl that he’s dated since high school. His life is a dull routine, and frankly, sounds all-around awful, in my opinion, even if he was still with his girlfriend, but I digress...

Anyway, when the actor Andy Samberg pulls up next to him in a limo, and asks if he wants to get in, Tommy says yes.

Samberg was hired to take Tommy to a couple of weird Nordic guys, who ask him to play their game: Survive 30 days as a group of “Hunters” try to kill him, all while he’s being filmed for an audience who is watching it stream on the Dark Web. The only rule is that the Hunters can’t risk other people’s lives, so if he’s right next to someone else, he’s safe. After 30 days, he gets a million dollars.

Tommy says yes, as it sounds easy, in theory, just hang out for 30 days with someone. The problem is, Tommy has no one. He’s not in a relationship. His mother and sisters and brother-in-law don’t believe him, and he quickly uses up their tolerance. Once he burns through that small group, he’s all alone, because as the film already established, he’s a lonely sad-sack.

Because of this, Tommy is forced to turn to strangers in order to survive, which is where you’ll find the heart of the whole “people need human contact, otherwise we can’t go to brunch” central message of the film. First, Tommy hires an unhoused guy to shadow him, and their unexpected friendship is probably the best part of the film. A Craig’s List search for other possible contestants on the show leads him to Maddy (Anna Kendrick), whose disruptive energy/potential love-of-his-life role in the story becomes a little muddier and nonsensical as the film struggles to find a cohesive narrative and a tonal balance.

Mostly, Self Reliance is a twee allegory for the return to social interaction, never directly addressing the “harm” of COVID isolation, but aiming for something more like the very typical white guy makes a “sad white dude meets manic pixie dream girl” film. Johnson and Kendrick really are great together, and I really hope that I get to see them together again, but hopefully next time it’ll be in something better written.

Meanwhile, there’s occasional “dangerous” encounters with a giant in the “Beat It” jacket, a scary cowboy, a Mario-looking plumber, an Ellen Degeneres impersonator, a samurai guy, a sumo wrestler, and a guy who dresses like Sinbad—the comedian, not the pirate. While I liked the idea of the weird hunters, sure, the problem is… there’s not nearly enough of that shit. There’s no danger. No threat. There’s no real tension in the chase. There’s almost no chase at all, really. It’s mostly just sitting around, because the hunters won’t attack if there’s other people nearby, sure, but that loophole mostly just kills the tension. Maybe a tense movie wasn’t the intention, but still… “unknown hunters trying to kill you and you must survive that for 30 days” is the fucking hook of the film, so comedic or not… it’s fair to expect that this idea would be much more present in the story, right?

More the fool me, I guess…

Jake Johnson (New Girl, Spider-man: Across the Spider-verse, Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse, and The Mummy) has apparently been dragging this script idea around Hollywood for years, and it shows. He’s listed as the sole writer, but given the vagaries of Hollywood when it comes to writing credits, I have a hard time believing this.

The script has that distinct feeling of having passed through many, many hands. Maybe this just means that Johnson rewrote it dozens and dozens of times, but that also means that he’s god damn terrible at seeing the whole picture. Because otherwise, this script feels like it started out as a Most Dangerous Game riff that was rewritten to more closely resemble The Game, that was then rewritten into something more like a Total Recall/Eternal Sunshine kind of thing. It then feels like a series of people came and went on drafts, and each one added some comedy bits, maybe a sprinkle of French farce pratfalls, or a bit of Danish Uncomfortable Squirm humor, or perhaps a pinch of Coen Bros quirk, or a sprinkle of Fight Club salt, maybe a dash of the “normal guy in a crazy situation” zest. Then someone else came along and turned it into a sad comedy about growing up, until finally, it landed in another person’s inbox and they turned it into a parable about the loneliness of mental health issues. Each time, with each new set of hands, a little more was added to the script, and a little too much was chopped out of it, but also, each time, some ill-fitting bit that maybe should’ve been excised was forgotten, and left behind.

The end result is a patchwork quilt of incomplete themes and ideas, unearned arcs, and puzzling additions, all of it then thrown hard against a wall made of the Ego of an Actor’s first time Personal Project, and Hollywood’s continued reliance on finding the movie in Post-Production.

And for us, the audience, that means we’re all left with a film that’s a game effort, but a disappointing failure.

There’s some funny bits, especially the PA Ninjas, and the cast is filled with some legitimately funny people, but ultimately, for a film about the need for connection and friendship, the loneliness of mental health issues, and the fact people are trying to kill the main character, the film doesn’t have the spine to fully lean into the drama that the events of its script implies. Self Reliance is both expected and unexpected, but not in a good way either way.

Pass.