CFF25 REVIEW: Self-Help [2025]

Rating: R | Runtime: 85 minutes
Release Date: October 31st, 2025 (USA)
Studio: Mainframe Pictures / Cineverse Entertainment
Director(s): Erik Bloomquist
Writer(s): Erik Bloomquist & Carson Bloomquist

Have the courage to have the conflict.

Olivia (Landry Bender) hasn’t seen her mother since the first day of freshman year college, but their planned reunion isn’t conjuring excitement. No, the teen only feels anxiety and dread. If it were up to her, she’d continue her avoidance. Just keep having fun in school, doing things she instantly regrets, and not worry about anyone but herself. It’s therefore ironic that it’s not up to her considering the place Olivia is going is a retreat meant for self-actualization and autonomy. She has those things right now away from Rebecca’s (Amy Hargreaves) nonsense and yet it’s being taken from her to satisfy everyone else’s desires.

Director Erik Bloomquist and co-writer Carson Bloomquist bake this contradiction into Self-Help with intent because the message is in the hypocrisy. So too, however, is the intrigue. Because while Curtis Clark’s (Jake Weber) cult-like “non-cult” is either a scheme or sadistic horror show, it’s also earnestly changing lives. Are the tactics extreme? You bet. Is the metamorphosis being sold sometimes the product of mutilation or voluntarily escaping the “prison” of this mortal coil? Another affirmative. But you must also ask if Joanne (Carol Cadby), Andy (Blaque Fowler), and Owen (played by the director) are better off. The definition varies considering you can’t feel pain if you aren’t alive, but … yes.

The film is therefore less about good versus evil as—like Curtis explains—about conquering personal demons. It’s a journey that forces Olivia to confront other people (namely her mother and a past incident, which unfolds via prologue, that marred their relationship since it occurred), but, in so doing, she’s also confronting the fear of engaging in any confrontation at all. We see it throughout the opening scenes at school. If not for her BFF Sophie (Madison Lintz) being a doting “mom” to shepherd her everywhere, there wouldn’t be a movie. And that’s part of the problem too. Olivia should be able to tell Sophie to take a hike. Maybe she soon will if the weekend proves successful.

Now, the use of the word “successful” here is highly subjective since Olivia’s unwitting quest for self-confidence demands a body count for the genre Gods. So, she might come out the other end with a newfound sense of freedom, but it won’t be without others paying a price. What I really enjoyed about how Self-Help deals with this reality, though, is that nobody on-screen is without fault. Everyone has a secretive past mired in tragedy for which they’re trying to unburden themselves via Curtis’ unorthodox seminar (an adjective he’d accept due to being fully cognizant that his methods’ theatricality is part of the appeal). Do they deserve to die? No one deserves to die. But Bloomquist knows he has a lot of rope where sacrificing certain lambs is concerned.

As a result, don’t expect a traditional narrative structure despite this being an A-to-B path for Olivia regardless of the other parallel paths around her. Since Curtis wields his dishonesty with genuine intent, the usual places for dramatic reversals, climactic reveals, and denouement often just keep going. I don’t want to say the heightened moments end in a whimper due to the word’s negative connotations, but the shock value often comes from anticlimactic responses. This isn’t a knock on the film, though. It’s one of its strongest attributes. Because you’re always on your toes. Always wondering if maybe Olivia is the real villain. Or that Curtis might be wholly legit. Or that we’re losing our minds as far as nothing turning out quite how convention has conditioned us to assume it should.

This complexity isn’t used strictly for laughs or frights either. It’s actually a means to inject some surprisingly effective empathy into the mix. Because a few of these characters are truly being saved. The process is painful emotionally (and, invariably, physically), but it provides the kick in the pants to finally crest that hill without falling back down into old, self-destructive patterns. The film isn’t asking us to judge anyone by painting with black and white morality. It’s merely hoping we see the humanity beneath our urge to hide and the empowered strength arising from it being conquered. The people doing good through harm might still be punished, but that good work doesn’t automatically become void.

Bender is great as our level-headed guide into the chaos (and open-eyed guide out) while Adam Weppler delivers us a scenery-chewing baddie to enjoy, but it’s those between them that stick out because of their psychological instability. Cadby and Fowler are excellent in roles that would usually be easy fodder for gruesome kills, but are instead examples of mankind’s courage to endure. Weber and Lintz are perfectly untrustworthy in how they manipulate with psychobabble (him a “guru” and her a psychiatrist’s daughter). And Hargreaves steals the show as a woman coming to grips with the lies she told herself only to experience the devastation of admitting them and realizing that admission was built on more.

It all adds up to an invigorating ride that supplies everything necessary for horror fans to latch onto at the surface and a captivating human story of imperfect souls doing their best to, ultimately, accept themselves underneath.