Jake Johnson wrote and directed Self Reliance as well as acted in it with Anna Kendrick. It’s a movie about a man who decides to continue in a game where he agrees to be hunted for 30 days, and if he survives, he gets a million dollars.
Jake Johnson has a meeting with the people who invited him to the game. After asking questions, he learns that the hunters can’t kill him if he’s with a family member or a friend, anyone who would be in danger if they were close to him. So, he comes up with a loophole.
He asks his family and friends if they would stay with him for the 30 days he has to stay alive, and they each decline. They think he’s insane. They don’t believe a word he’s saying, and quite frankly, he sounds insane. I know he’s not lying, but he even sounds insane to me. I would have thought the same thing, but I would have shadowed him. Why not? What does it hurt?
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Anyway, he’s forced to hire a bum to shadow him, and that works out pretty well. But he had put an ad out on Craigslist to see if anyone else was playing, and Anna Kendrick answered it. Jake Johnson’s brainchild is that if they are together, the hunters can’t kill them. That’s not a spoiler because that’s at the beginning of the movie, and it won’t ruin anything for you. It’s also in the trailer below, so if Hulu put that in there, the movie hasn’t been ruined for you yet, and it’s not going to be.
The thing is that I don’t see how that would work. If Anna is also playing the game, then hunters are hunting her as well. Why wouldn’t the hunters just kill them both? Anna wouldn’t be protected by the rules.
The movie is funny and interesting because of the situations in which he finds himself. Jake and Anna are great together and should do more movies or even a series. But there is more to the story, and that’s up to you to find out.
