TIFF 2026 | MOVIE REVIEW: “Salvation” Is A Deeply Uncomfortable Look At The Modern Male Influencer
10/12 ForReel score | 4/5 Stars
Wanting to improve your life for the better is a completely normal desire. Going through the motions of life can sometimes put you in patterns that you aren’t happy with, leaving you feeling unmotivated or lost. It’s just as normal to ask for help in times like this in order to have someone there for you when you need it the most. Someone to help pick you up and encourage you to keep going, to navigate this journey. Tom Nicoll’s Salvation is a story about a young man trying to build a career as a life coach, only for us to see that he’s worse off than the people he tries to help.
Salvation is about an aspiring life coach named Danny trying to build his own platform in his hometown in order to hopefully grow his business and expand. His first client, Scott, is a young man who’s currently completely lost in life. Over the course of the film Danny struggles with keeping himself afloat. He strives to look professional and go all in on this influencer lifestyle, but he just doesn’t have the means to support it and suffers because of it. Salvation is not a movie about money troubles or the lengths someone would go to support their work. It’s about this vicious cycle young men fall into and how infrequently males in this space allow themselves to admit that they just want any kind of validation. It’s an unnerving look at the lengths someone would go to to manipulate those around them for personal gain, and Nicoll succeeds incredibly in portraying that.
Danny is played by a fantastic Liam Harkins, acting opposite Stephen McMillan’s Scott. This isn’t a very subtle film in terms of its messaging, but Nicoll takes a quieter approach to it in his execution. It sits on the stove a little until you reach a massive boiling point in that third act. It’s entirely the job of the actors involved to sell the story here, and these two are wonderful. McMillan is a standout. He delivers a raw and tame performance in a very stressful and nerve-racking environment. He excels in making Scott come off as this character that you just feel bad for. He’s clearly someone who is being taken advantage of, but he doesn’t see it even as he gets deeper and deeper into it with Danny. Another scene-stealer is Kathleen McDermott playing Danny’s stressed mother. She’s constantly the voice of reason, providing us with the most honest look into Danny’s world.
With some claustrophobic camerawork from Alex Grigoras and suffocating direction from Nicoll, all eyes are on Harkins for the majority of the film. It’s a daunting task, but he steps up to the plate big time. He does so well to fill you with a deep secondhand embarrassment every time he’s on screen, but you also can’t help but feel bad for him in a pathetic way. Danny is a liar, a procrastinator, and an overachiever in the worst way and Harkins does well in encouraging you to see Danny for the sad, arrogant, lonely man he is. Salla Luhtala also delivers an eerie score here — my only real complaint with the film being that it’s hardly present. Ultimately, it may be the right choice, as the silence filling every shot is really important for us to sit with Danny and his devolving personality; though, that score is just phenomenal when it’s there.
Influencers in general tend to prey upon the weak and lost, but Nicoll zeroing in on this community of male life coaches to tell his story is a stroke of genius. It’s men targeting other men under the guise of helping, when in reality all they see when looking at them is another subscriber number to boast and market. They promise you a better life and a strong future but they just tell you what you want to hear. They tell you that you’re just in a rut right now, and only they can help you go climb out of it. They make things sound worse than they are for you, and then sell you the idea that they’re the only ones who can help. Nicoll writes a nuanced story about Danny being someone who genuinely wants to be doing this at first, but learns over time that the only real way to get anywhere with his career is with money. It’s always going to be about the money. Danny is this sad and intricate character who’s easily susceptible to believing he can be better and more honest than his peers. Danny is not a good person, but one who is easy to look down on and just feel bad for. He’s manipulative, ill-equipped, and untrustworthy, and yet every time he’s on screen you can’t help but cringe at him digging his own grave deeper and deeper.
Tom Nicoll’s Salvation is blessed with the gift of a fantastic cast and crew. Harkins, McMillan, and McDermott absolutely kill it and pull you in anytime one of them is on the screen. The cinematography from Grigoras, paired with the lack of a prominent score for the majority of the runtime creates one of the most uncomfortable experiences of the year as we get incredibly close with Danny in his quest to prove himself and help others. He’s weaselly and resourceful, and it just makes him so entertaining. Nicoll puts together a wildly engaging experience that makes for one of the best films of the entire year.