Self Reliance (2024) follows Thomas Walcott, whose miserable life is shaken up when he’s recruited to play a peculiar reality game. The film is streaming on Hulu.
Warning: This article contains heavy spoilers
Plot summary
Thomas Walcott has been living through a mundane routine in his life as a statistical analyst and getting over a significant break-up.
He is approached by a limo with actor Andy Samberg sitting inside and a once-in-a-lifetime offer.
Samberg states that the company that hired him has been tracking Thomas for a long time and knows all about his life.
He is driven to an empty warehouse where he meets two Greenlandic men asking him if he’d be interested in playing their game.
It is a reality show on the dark web where Thomas will be hunted for sport for 30 days. If he survives the duration then he wins a million dollars.
They also mention that the hunters will only strike when he’s alone so as long as he’s in the presence of another person, he is safe.
Thomas questions how people will be watching and the men explain that they have trained production assistants to watch his every move without being spotted.
They give him another chance to back out but Thomas is confident and agrees to play the game.
He tells the rest of his family about what he encountered but they do not believe him at all. They assume he’s reacting emotionally to the fact that his ex is now married and has a child.
Thomas is disappointed in his family but doesn’t have anyone else to rely on. When he’s awoken by some noises on the second day, he calls his mother.
She’s a nurse and she asks him not to show up at the hospital, so he heads over to his sister’s place so that he isn’t alone.
Thomas’s brother-in-law heads to the washroom in the middle of the night and Thomas breaks the door down because he spots a hunter outside and needs to be with someone.
His brother-in-law kicks him out and Thomas ends up hiring a homeless person named James to shadow him.
His family isn’t thrilled about this but Thomas reaches day 14 of the game without incident. While he’s out with his sister, he gets a response to his Craigslist posting of the game.
He contacts a woman who claims to also be playing the game and they set up a meeting for the next day.
He wanders off to call her and a giant dressed up in Michael Jackson attire starts choking him. Thomas manages to escape before James catches up and apologizes for being late.
The next day, he meets Maddy who claims to have 15 days left. Thomas has 16 days left and he suggests partnering up so that they can win together.
She isn’t too sure about it so he convinces her to at least spend the day and see what it is like.
She takes him back home and they get talking about their lives during lunch. He mentions how he still isn’t sure why his ex broke up with him, so she pushes him to find out.
After getting the closure he needed, they agreed to be partners for the rest of the game. The first night he spends at Maddy’s house, a production assistant reveals himself to Thomas.
He warns Thomas that Maddy’s place isn’t safe so Thomas convinces her to go to a motel with him.
That night, a hunter dressed up as Mario shows up but when he realizes that Thomas isn’t alone, he walks away while Thomas and Maddy smack-talk him.
They spend days together at the motel having fun and getting closer until another player responds to Thomas’ ad.
Maddy doesn’t want to meet them but Thomas is curious to find others like him. They meet the person who tells them that the reality show is a comedy called “Delusions of Grandeur (D.O.G)”.
They pick contestants who are going through a tough time and have a lot of self-doubt and force them into a difficult situation.
The other player leaves and Maddy’s mood suddenly changes. She tells Thomas that she doesn’t want to play together anymore and offers to drop him off somewhere safe.
Ending explained:
How does Thomas get back on track?
Thomas doesn’t take the split with Maddy too well and curses to the heavens hoping the cameras catch it while his sister and brother-in-law watch.
That night, the PA wakes him up and tells him that there’s a limo waiting for him outside and he needs to go.
Inside the limo, Thomas finds his father waiting for him. His father abandoned the family when Thomas was 10.
Thoma’s father shares a message that Maddy is safe, and then he apologizes for leaving Thomas and his family.
What does Maddy tell him?
Thomas gets James to shadow him again and he heads over to Maddy’s house after not hearing from her for days.
He checks up on her but she reveals that she isn’t playing the game. She saw his ad on Craigslist and was so bored that she figured she might have some fun.
Before Thomas can even process what he hears, he gets a text from his mother asking him to come home because it’s an emergency.
How does Thomas spend the final days?
Thomas is attacked by an Ellen Degeneres impersonator on his way to his mother’s house because James isn’t able to keep up.
At his house, his family is having an intervention for him, but Thomas sneaks out with James and runs away.
They head to a bridge where homeless people stay and Thomas shares his appreciation for James for sticking by him.
James returns the appreciation and asks Thomas to keep his head in the game no matter what happens.
James also reveals that his real name is Walter, and Thomas just randomly called him James.
The next morning, Walter is nowhere to be found, and Thomas spends his days living like a homeless person under the bridge with the rest of them.
How does the game end?
On the final day, a PA walks up to him and tells him that he needs to leave the bridge area because viewers find it depressing.
Once he leaves, he needs to find the limo waiting for him that will take him to the end. Along the way, Thomas encounters other hunters who are waiting for their moment.
He reaches the limo where Andy Samberg is waiting for him once again. He gets the offer to leave with his life and no money or continue playing till the end.
Thomas pushes on and he is taken to the warehouse from the beginning. Hunters chase him down to the final room where he is all by himself,
He makes a big speech and then everyone walks in to congratulate him for winning.
He later gloats to his family about winning, with Wayne Brady there as proof because they could afford him.
The payment is actually in Greenlandic currency and it is in installments of four thousand a month for 250 months, but Thomas believes it was all worth it.
He visits Maddy’s house once again because he really connected with her, and the game helped him grow emotionally which raised his self-belief.
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