‘Self Reliance’ Review: Anna Kendrick in Jake Johnson’s Timidly Absurdist Take on Reality TV

What would occur when you stripped the gore from Squid Game and added the allure of New Girl blended with the eeriness of The Truman Show? You’d get one thing like Jake Johnson’s quiet and quirky directorial debut Self-Reliance. The understated movie, which premiered at SXSW, follows a lonely, cantankerous man who’s introduced with the chance to take part in a actuality tv present for the darkish net.

Thomas (Johnson) lives an insular life, outlined by his mundane routines. He wakes up at 7 a.m. to the blaring horn sound of his telephone alarm and spins on a house stationary bike earlier than heading to his workplace, the place he spends hours hunched over a pc. He was once in a relationship — however that ended a number of years in the past. Judging from the framed {photograph} of Thomas and his ex-girlfriend (Natalie Morales) prominently positioned on his bedside desk, Thomas isn’t over it.

This stasis is what, partially, propels Thomas to hitch a darkish net actuality present he’s by no means heard of. The invitation and its phrases and circumstances are defined by Andy Samberg (taking part in himself). When Thomas — not even ready for all the data — enthusiastically agrees, Samberg appears at him incredulously. Does he actually don’t have anything higher to do than undergo a life-threatening recreation the place strangers attempt to homicide him for 30 days?

He doesn’t, and he’s not alone. The up to date actuality tv panorama is riddled with folks humiliating themselves or going through excessive conditions. Dating reveals like Love Island and The Bachelor sequester folks on islands and in mansions to power romance. Survivor, Alone or The Challenge take a look at particular person capacities for perseverance with the pure world and different people. The proof that folks will do wild issues for money prizes, glory or out of sheer boredom is throughout us.

Self Reliance understands this intrinsically, so it’s disappointing that the movie doesn’t lean all the best way into its absurd premise. With its winking jokes and nudging asides, the movie insists on its self-awareness. This is most obvious when watching Thomas work together together with his household, a clan of nonbelievers. When he tells them in regards to the present, they tease him. When he tells them that he must be round somebody on a regular basis to keep away from demise, they chuckle him off. Their responses — the disbelief, the mocking, the exasperation — are proxies for an anticipated viewers response, an acknowledgement of the ridiculousness of all of it.

But it’s not all that ridiculous when you consider it. Genuine connection has at all times been scarce, however in the course of the top of the pandemic in 2020 it turned much more so. Johnson wrote the screenplay for Self Reliance throughout this scary, unpredictable and lonely interval. The classes from isolation undergird the movie’s emotional core. Being on the present (the identify of which I gained’t reveal) helps Thomas cope together with his breakup, encourages him to get out on the planet and reinvigorates and strengthens his capability to care about different folks. His friendship with James (Biff Wiff), a homeless man he randomly conscripts, begins off in doubtful territory solely to bloom into one thing genuine.

The identical can’t be stated about his relationship to Maddy (Anna Kendrick), a lady he learns can be on the truth present. That ingredient destabilizes the movie’s tone — which, up till then, has been laced with irony. Maddy’s motivations are underwritten, so her presence feels doubly irritating because it shifts the vibes towards the softer and extra sentimental with out offering a lot readability.  

Self Reliance fares higher when it performs up its fictional actuality TV present. Johnson flexes his familiarity with the panorama and its mechanics. Samberg’s transient look as a messenger captures the vessel-like vacuousness of actuality TV hosts. The manufacturing assistants, whom Thomas refers to as ninjas for the best way they slink out and in of his life, seem periodically for comedian aid and to supply cryptic clues. They are reminders of the not-so-invisible producer hand of actuality TV. With the assistance of DP Adam Sliver, Johnson additionally subtly distinguishes the movie’s views, shifting between Thomas’ viewpoint and ours as viewers of this obscure present.

All of this makes you would like Self Reliance took extra liberties with its premise and simply acquired weirder. Part of the enjoyable of actuality tv is its uncanniness. The conditions are manufactured, however their stakes really feel actual to the individuals and viewers. There are a number of moments in Self Reliance when it’s clear that Thomas is in a life-threatening scenario, however for a lot of the movie it’s all too straightforward to overlook.