Self Reliance

Self Reliance is the directorial debut of New Girl alum Jake Johnson. It takes the thriller genre and throws it in a blender with a comedy. I’m struggling to think of anything I’ve seen with a comparable tone.

In the film Tommy, played by Johnson, accepts an offer to play a game where he will be hunted and possibly killed by an unknown number of assailants. If he can survive for 30 days, he will win one million dollars. The catch is – he can only be harmed when he is alone. This leads him to go to extreme lengths to find the company of family, friends, and strangers.

Tommy tries to exploit this loophole for as long as he can. He spends every minute with family – until they can’t stand him anymore. He turns to paying a stranger to “shadow” him, following him around so he can live his regular life without fear of being killed. It only escalates from there as Tommy does everything in his power to never be alone.

He soon meets Maddie, played by Anna Kendrick, who tells him she is playing the same game as him. They team up, agreeing to spend the rest of their time together so they can both win a million dollars. Kendrick does a great job, bringing perhaps the most subtle but greatest performance of the film.

The cast is very good, no one is wasted in their roles. Anna Kendrick and Biff Wiff have great chemistry with Johnson, and Andy Samberg as a broken version of himself felt very human and vulnerable, yet still with the Samberg charm of his comedic roles.

This movie is Funny with a capitol F. I laughed a lot more than I expected. Johnson is able to blend humor into dark situations very well, both with dialogue and his own physicality as an actor.

This film was written during Covid, and you can tell. The themes of human connection saving you and the fear of loneliness are all throughout the script. Whether you prefer to be alone or with others, this film will likely connect with you in some way.

I really enjoyed this film. I’d give it a 7/10. While it was wild and weird, I think it could’ve been taken up a notch or two and pushed a few more boundaries.