‘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.

Read more at The Daily Beast.