Movie Review: Survival Skills is a Trenchant Parody of Police Training

Director Quinn Armstrong’s new movie Survival Skills takes the perspective of a 1980’s police training video, complete with a VHS sheen and tracking issues, to create a parody of the seeming futility in the lives of Police Officers. The intent is both a dark humor and a plumbing of the depths of how poorly we have equipped ourselves for those who commit acts of terror against the people closest to them. Survival Skills is a little disjointed and not particularly funny for a parody but the impact is still felt.

Survival Skills stars Vayu O’Donnell as Jim. Jim is the star of a police training video in the small town of Middletown U.S.A. Middletown is a place so patriotic and steeped in the American mythos that the town voted for Ronald Reagan in 1988 even though he wasn’t on the ballot. Stacy Keach portrays the narrator of the training video. He introduces Jim as a 30 year old rookie on the force, a naive man eager to serve and the desire to help people.

On Jim’s first day on the job his first call is a domestic violence call. Jim and his new partner, a veteran female officer, Allison (Ericka Kreutz), observe the situation and we are shown a rather silly diagram of how police are supposed to intercede in this situation. The reality however, begins to bend as Jim finds himself deviating from the script. Jim has a conversation with the abused wife, Leah (Emily Chisholm) and encourages her to speak to him and that he can help her out of this situation.

This becomes a regular occurrence as Jim’s training proceeds he has a nagging sense that drives him to deviate from the script. He begins trying to help the abused spouse and her daughter, Lauren (Madeline Anderson), only to find that every aspect of the system that is intended to help victims is filled with cynical, worn down functionaries who either lack the resources or the wherewithal to help people in need. The wife and daughter, for their part, are terrified and when Jim proves ineffective in helping them, they aren’t going to wait around.

The story progresses to slowly breaking Jim’s character down from the robotic and naive protagonist of a scripted training video to a broken, sad, and self-destructive man bent on trying to find a shred of justice in an unjust situation. You will need to see the movie for yourself to see exactly where that thread leads and it’s worth following to see for yourself. Survival Skills is a parody with some teeth to it.

Writer-director Quinn Armstrong had two inspirations of Survival Skills. The first was time spent working with domestic violence victims and witnessing firsthand the limitations of our ability to protect and provide for victims. The second was a completely terrifying and very real police training video that has become an infamous bit of internet lore, the video 'Surviving Edged Weapons,' an extraordinarily graphic and unintentionally hilarious bit of scaremongering made for Police training in the 80's.

These twin inspirations combine to give Survival Skills an edge that traditional parody lacks. Armstrong is using the tools of a send-up to make some very serious and trenchant points about our police force and our approach to victims. It's a heavy subject made deft and watchable by the structure of parody, a wildly clever use of the parody form.

One of the big talking points of the 'Defund the Police' movement is that counselors would be better suited to handle situations than Police Officers whose training tends to create a sense of constant danger rather than one of empathy and understanding. Survival Skills does well to show the futility of a system where cops are fully funded but a domestic violence shelter struggles for resources to help abuse victims.

Jim is ill-equipped from his training to be able to help these victims in the way they need to be helped. They need resources for money, food, shelter, help finding work and protection from their abusers. Cops are trained to assess the danger of a situation, determine what, if any, crime has occurred and resolve the situation with an arrest or other due process of law. That leaves a whole lot of gray areas when the crime committed isn’t crystal clear. That’s not to mention that the cop’s involvement ends once they’ve moved the crime along to the courts.

Survival Skills in an abstract way makes the case for “Defund the Police” in a most effective way. By effectively demonstrating the limitation of a by the book police approach to something like domestic abuse, the movie effectively demonstrates what a different model of our system of law enforcement might look like. With the character of Jim forced by circumstance to be a cop, a therapist, a social worker and a fundraiser, the challenges faced by those in abusive situations are succinctly demonstrated as are the lengths and capabilities of basic human decency.

Survival Skills is a parody but it’s not The Naked Gun or Loaded Weapon, it’s not a Mel Brooks movie. This is a parody that uses the form of a broad comedic send-up to make serious points and mixes comedy with horror movie imagery and serious drama. It's like few movies I have ever seen and I loved it. The experiment in form underlines a strong central point to create a one of a kind movie.

I would be remiss if I didn't take a moment to highlight the work of the brilliant Stacy Keach. Keach's portrayal of the narrator is exceptional as he struggles with Jim's deviation from the script. Keach has a scene near the end of Survival Skills that hits like a ton of bricks and much of it comes down to the gravitas of his presence and delivery.

Survival Skills will have a limited theatrical release on November 13th and be available on most on-demand streaming rental services on December 4th.