REVIEW: Self Reliance [2024]

Rating: R | Runtime: 85 minutes
Release Date: January 3rd, 2024 (USA)
Studio: Neon / Hulu
Director(s): Jake Johnson
Writer(s): Jake Johnson

Let’s play.

I love the idea that Tommy (Jake Johnson) thinks he’s living David Fincher’s The Game only to discover it’s actually Jake Johnson’s Self Reliance (he stars, writes, and directs). The notion of being on a dark web reality show wherein unknown assassins are trying to kill him (he’ll win a million dollars if he survives thirty days) conjures a pulse-pounding action thriller of death-defying odds in his mind. The financiers and audience, however, aren’t impacted by those same stakes. To them, Tommy’s just a depressive Joe Schmo living his boring life with the added bonus of also becoming the world’s punch line rather than just his own.

I also like that Johnson acknowledged the premise of his character’s plan to “beat the game” was flawed. Because while the “loophole” of no one being allowed to kill him if an innocent bystander might get unintentionally harmed allows for a “shadow” to keep him safe (Tommy tries to enlist a family member, but must settle for a paid vagrant in Biff Wiff’s genial James), the thought of having another contestant be that shadow is flawed. Because they wouldn’t be innocent collateral damage. They’d be incentive—like killing two birds with one stone.

As such, Johnson must carefully build this high concept kick-in-the-pants for Tommy with as much room to flip what we know to be true as room for absurd developments that must be false (but aren’t). It helps that Anna Kendrick is so endearingly likable as Maddy too. We stop trying to figure out how having two contestants together will inevitably get them both killed and start enjoying the hijinks and pure joy of life they both find themselves embracing for the first time in years. After all, there’s nothing like every day potentially being your last to finally make you live like it.

The comedy is great too—or, at least, the sort of comedy I personally enjoy. Johnson has a knack for jokes where the laugh comes in the silent consideration of a learned truth that’s hyper-specific and completely inconsequential to the drama at-hand. Like when he, Kendrick, and Gata stop their very serious conversation about survival to wax on about Wayne Brady’s brilliance as a performer. Add Andy Samberg playing himself and a disbelieving family (Emily Hampshire, Mary Holland, Daryl J. Johnson, and others) causing us (but never Tommy) to wonder if it’s all a delusion and we’re kept on our toes even if the stakes stay low.

Because, in the end, it’s not about the game. Or the “I told you so’s.” Or the regrets that have pushed Tommy into the type of corner that would make him agree to play in the first place. It’s about what he learns. Not about those around him (despite thinking he’d find answers in understanding their motivations), but himself. What does he want? What would make him knock on a closed door? If curiosity was enough, he’d have done it already. The thing he really fears is accepting that the only person in his way of happiness has always been him.