‘Self Reliance’: It’s Quite Fun Watching Jake Johnson Being Hunted for Sport

If someone offered you $1 million to be hunted for sport for 30 days straight on reality TV, would you consider it? Rationality would likely end up telling you no (unless you were the Netflix producers who commissioned that Squid Game reality show); no amount of money’s worth losing your life over. But what if you were presented with a relatively attractive loophole: You can’t be killed unless you’re alone. Seems like an easy enough way around an almost certain demise. Just keep someone by your side at all times and collect a fat paycheck for the effort.

For Jake Johnson’s character in Self Reliance (streaming Jan. 12 on Hulu) that’s easier said than done. Johnson plays Tommy, a data analyst whose life is essentially a constant cycle of mundane tasks. Tommy wakes up, hops on his elliptical, goes to work, heads out for an evening drink solo, and goes home to do it all over again. The only occasional change in this pattern is when Tommy stops by his ex-girlfriend Theresa’s (Natalie Morales) house, where he thinks about knocking to finally ask what went wrong in their relationship, but never puts fist to door.

But that structure is interrupted one evening when Tommy is approached by Andy Samberg (playing a parodic version of himself) in a limousine, who offers him the opportunity of a lifetime—one that might just be the end of Tommy’s. Tommy agrees to participate in the most dangerous game, thinking he can convince one of the many people in his life to hang close by so he can avoid being slaughtered. Of course, if you’re at a place in life where you’re up for being violently pursued, it’s best not to consider yourself lucid enough to predict the outcome.

On paper, Self Reliance might seem too far-fetched to pull off. But its execution is deceptively confident. Johnson, who also wrote and directed the movie, keeps its ludicrous premise at a constant simmer. He brings his uniquely amiable wit both in front of the camera and behind it. Even if the premise’s general implausibility might irritate some viewers seeking broader answers, Self Reliance assuredly lands as a rare, truly original oddball comedy that succeeds by dialing up its idiosyncrasies.

After being lured into a limousine with the promise of cozying up with Samberg, Tommy is chauffeured off to an abandoned warehouse, where two Greenlandic men lay out the conditions of his game. They control a dark web reality competition show that nobody has ever won, and if Tommy should choose to move forward, they’ll call on their men to bug his house with microscopic cameras. Not totally off his rocker (yet), Tommy is skeptical. But the game’s sole rule—that he can’t be killed unless he’s alone—clouds his better judgment, and he agrees to the hunt.

Such immense stakes beget an equally outsized reaction from Tommy’s family, who obviously don’t believe anything he tells them. His sisters, Amy and Mary (Mary Holland and Emily Hampshire) tease him, while their mother Laurie (Nancy Lenehan) warns Tommy that if his “game” affects his ability to hold down his job, she’ll kick him out of the house they share and make his life even sadder. It’s fitting that Self Reliance’s primary message is all about the importance of keeping reliable, loving people in your orbit, because these group scenes bring the movie to life. There’s a lifelike, improvisational nature to the family dynamic in Johnson’s script; when Amy’s husband Malcolm (Daryl J. Johnson) calls Andy Samberg “The Sams,” Holland and Hampshire look as though they’re genuinely cracking up at a line they didn’t expect to hear.

But with his family reluctant to believe him, much less shadow him day and night, Tommy hires an unhoused man (Biff Wiff) to help ensure his safety while waiting on additional answers from a carefully worded Craigslist ad. That listing brings him to Maddy (Anna Kendrick), another one of the game’s players, who only has 15 days left to survive until she wins her money. While the film brings its two leads together in a predictable way, Kendrick and Johnson’s sweet chemistry is warm enough to overlook some clunky narrative setups.

Though it’s largely a comedy, the movie pulls a surprising amount of tension from its dark web game conceit. Tommy is followed by a team of “contortionist production coordinator ninjas” responsible for producing his story in an interesting way for the audience at home. Their reveals in the cover of night are just creepy enough that viewers will recall them just before they turn out their lights before bed. And while there’s a pretty paltry amount of violence in a movie about hunting someone to their death, the occasional moments where Tommy is left compromised and alone for someone to attack give the film an engaging ebb and flow that keeps the screenplay from being too straightforward or unimaginative.

That said, Self Reliance doesn’t take its fascinating, ambitious plot as far as it could. But its consistently funny twists, offbeat choices, and endearing—albeit expected—ending elevate it to the top of a crowded pool of straight-to-streaming comedies. Johnson’s film never lets up but doesn’t overstay its welcome, clocking in at a cool, painless 90 minutes of breezy fun. Self Reliance has the same wry unfussiness as its triple-threat writer-director-star (make that quadruple, if you count Johnson’s ravishing good looks) brings to almost all of his roles. It’s that same unassuming affability that makes his film a heartwarming, palatable delight.