Survival Skills is a story about how even a so-called ‘good cop’ can’t do the right thing when they want to because the system was never designed to work for the most vulnerable in the first place.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Nov 22, 2022

Armstrong has an ace up his sleeve in the film's final ten minutes, removing a lot of the inherent, palate-deadening bitterness in the process.

| Jun 5, 2021

Quinn Armstrong perfectly recreates the feeling of an over-produced (half-baked) instructional video that thinks the world's complicated problems are as simple as programming a Toshiba VCR

| Original Score: 9/10 | Mar 1, 2021

Quinn Armstrong's Survival Skills is a peculiar film. It's adequately made, to be sure, and there's something to be said for the 80s safety guide style of yore. It just doesn't seem be sure what it's trying to say.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 27, 2021

Survival Skills is at times disturbing, and Armstrong just about keeps a handle on what could have been a difficult tonal switch, and the end product is something quite special.

| Original Score: 4/5 | Jan 13, 2021

A head trip that shoots off into unexpected and topical directions.

| Original Score: 3.5/4 | Dec 4, 2020

It's weird and not entirely successful, but at least Survival Skills has a profound sense of purpose.

| Original Score: 5/10 | Dec 4, 2020

Survival Skills feels like something you'd stumble upon on Adult Swim circa 2014, sandwiched between Too Many Cooks and reruns of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Nov 29, 2020

A slick indictment of the chasm between what should be happening and what does happen when a rookie cop tries his best to do what's right.

| Nov 20, 2020

The movie lost me, never completely creating a cohesive experience that made me see any value in all the histrionics (writer/director Quinn) Armstrong puts viewers through.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Nov 19, 2020

None of this would work without a stunning and nuanced performance by O'Donnell.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Nov 10, 2020

Telling this story in the framework of a police training video isn't just a gimmick, but a clever way to draw attention to the problem.

| Nov 10, 2020

Makes a very serious social statement in an entertaining and inventive way.

| Oct 28, 2020

Survival Skills reminds one of the sort of twisted "infomercials" Adult Swim airs at 4 a.m. As the movie slowly drags it way to an hour and a half, it becomes extra clear why Adult Swim's programming sticks to 11- to 22-minute runtimes.

| Oct 24, 2020

A few segments go so dark for so long that the film effectively becomes a drama...only to snap back into absurdism.

| Oct 12, 2020

A love-it-or-hate-it film that serves up a brazen critique of the corruption and toxic culture present in some law enforcement organizations, in the most creative way possible.

| Original Score: 2.5 / 5 | Oct 12, 2020

While still finding its footing, Armstrong's style is freaky, funny, and a bit foreboding. The distinct mix of tones and visual aesthetics signal that he is an imagination to watch out for; there is surely more weirdness from where this came from.

| Sep 22, 2020

"The training-film aesthetic offers plenty of opportunities to employ some inventive, pitch-black satire about American law enforcement."

| Aug 28, 2020

Survival Skills is one of the most original comedies in ages- though you may spend more time gasping than laughing.

| Aug 27, 2020

[Survival Skills] is a more complicated film. Through a lens of familial abuse, it examines the way the institutions created to keep us safe spectacularly fail us.

| Original Score: 3.5/5 | Aug 26, 2020