Olivia (Landy Bender) and her friend Sophie (Madison Lintz) prepare for a weekend group therapy retreat, ostensibly to visit Olivia’s estranged mother Rebecca (Amy Hardgreaves) who has fallen under the sway of charismatic cult leader Curtis Clark (Jake Weber) posing as a therapist of sorts, while financially fleecing his followers with bogus guidance over the weekend. Is it enough to willfully convince yourself that you can solve your own problems, especially through a questionable mentor? And even if you’re able to resist such harmfully misleading advice, what if your mother is not?
Olivia, who already has unresolved issues with her mother’s indiscreet infatuations with shady men, balks at what her mother and the other participants are swallowing hook line and sinker. Olivia helps herself best by not trusting anyone else to show her what to do, whether cult leader, mother, or best friend. Her bullshit detector has kicked into high gear. She has strong doubts about the potential for any kind of emotional resolution and finds sure footing in her skepticism of results. Her distrust serves as ballast. Other peripheral characters don’t fare so well and end up capsizing psychologically to overwhelming guilt or shame or anger, revealing a self that can’t run away from its problems, let alone resolve them.
Although there is a masked slasher stalking the weekend participants, and there is truly one horrific sequence of eye trauma that had me wanting to hide my eyes, the horror in Self-Help is more about misplaced and abused trust and this is smartly realized through sharp writing, deft characterizations, and a final unexpected reveal that underscores the dangers of having past trauma exploited further by sociopaths who capitalize on the susceptibility of the wounded.
