Survival Skills

STARTS FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13TH IN OUR VIRTUAL CINEMA

(USA / 2020 / Directed by Quinn Armstrong)

Quinn Armstrong’s Survival Skills is a real rarity – an experimental comedy that satirizes police bureaucracy while posing as a lost VHS training video from the 1980s. In it, Jim (Vayu O’Donnell), the training video’s model policeman, winds up at odds with the video’s Narrator (Stacey Keach) when he cares too much, breaks protocol, and tries to resolve a case outside the law.

At the beginning of the film, the Narrator introduces us to Middletown Academy, set in a “typical American town, 89% white,” and to uber-earnest trainee, Jim, who believes he has what it takes to become a true protector of society. At first, the Jim we meet is a crude digital replica of a human being who is plucked into a house, given an emotionless girlfriend (Tyra Colar), and assigned a senior partner (Ericka Kreutz). As Jim visits a victim of domestic abuse, incident after incident, he grows emotionally involved in her case. Gradually, his character begins to defy the impersonal pretense of the training video, going so far as to purchase groceries for her and offering to find her a job and a place to stay. The harder he tries to protect her, the more he’s shunned by his colleagues, the people he tries to help, and the training video’s Narrator. As VHS static rips through the screen, the Narrator pleads, “Jim, think about what you’re doing.” Mixing retro nostalgia with heavy doses of wit, Survival Skills presents a politically charged critique that’s not only imaginative but timely. In one of the most tumultuous times for law enforcement since the 60s, it delivers a clever pill with a heaping spoonful of creativity.

Unrated / 1 hr 24 mins.