Salvation Review: A Sharp, Uncomfortable Look At Modern Masculinity's Dark Side [TIFF]

Salvation offers an incisive examination of modern masculinity, manipulation, and the dangerous fantasy sold by online self-improvement gurus.

Published Sep 21, 2026, 4:52 AM EDT

Josh is a film critic and journalist with over nine years of experience in the entertainment industry. Entering the field at just 17 years old, Josh went on to make his own website, The HoloFiles, and social media brand Star Wars Holocron, the most followed Star Wars fan account on Twitter/X.

A member of both the Chicago Indie Critics and the Hollywood Critics Alliance, Josh has covered major industry events including Star Wars Celebration and, most recently, CinemaCon for ScreenRant. His work has appeared in outlets such as Game Rant and Comic Book Resources (CBR), and he has been featured in publications including the BBC and The New York Times.

The manosphere has built an enormously profitable business out of selling young men a fantasy. Figures such as Andrew Tate and countless other, lesser-known influencers promise that confidence, wealth, status, and purpose are all within reach if men simply follow their rules, adopt their mindset, and buy into their version of masculinity. The appeal is obvious, particularly to people who feel directionless. But many of the people selling this dream are themselves performing, rather than living, the lives they purport.

The contradiction between the stark realities and feigned aspirations that men perpetuate online nowadays is at the heart of Salvation, an incisive film that critiques modern masculinity, ambition, manipulation, and the destructive consequences of pretending to have all the answers. Making its world premiere at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, writer-director Tom Nicoll’s feature debut follows Danny (Liam Harkins), an aspiring life coach who sees self-improvement as his ticket out of an increasingly aimless existence. His carefully cultivated confidence, however, conceals a life that looks nothing like the success he promises to others.

Salvation Uses Irony For Dramatic, Rather Than Comedic, Effect

The irony inherent to every moment of Salvation is difficult to miss, yet never played for laughs. Danny lives in a cramped house with a frustrated roommate; works a miserable job; has a strained relationship with his mother and her new boyfriend; has no romantic relationship; and struggles to pay his bills. Despite all this, he has somehow convinced himself that he is qualified to tell other people how to live.

Nicoll could have mined this premise primarily for comedy, but Salvation has something more uncomfortable in mind. Danny's contradictions expose the vulnerability of people who desperately want someone to tell them that their lives can become better, and the inherent contradictions of people who claim they have all the answers.

Danny himself is both a victim and an exploiter of that system. He pays some of his limited income to the man who trained him, effectively becoming another customer in the same cycle of self-improvement grifting that he later perpetuates. Once he starts working as a life coach, he encounters Scott (Stephen McMillan), a shy, disillusioned young man searching for direction while dealing with depression and a difficult relationship with his father.

Scott is exactly the kind of person who might be susceptible to Danny’s pitch. Danny speaks with complete conviction, presents himself as someone who understands the world, and has an easygoing friendliness that makes him seem trustworthy. He calls everyone “pal” and maintains an almost aggressively pleasant demeanor. But there is something subtly false about it all. His kindness feels rehearsed, and his confidence performative. The harder he tries to project success, the clearer it becomes that he is barely holding his own life together.

Rather than recognizing how much he and Scott have in common, Danny sees an opportunity. He exploits Scott’s uncertainty for his own financial benefit, becoming precisely the kind of manipulative figure he himself once paid to learn from. The film never needs to explicitly invoke the manosphere or name figures like Andrew Tate to make the comparison apparent. Danny belongs to the same broader ecosystem of people who identify vulnerable men, offer reductive, easily digestible explanations for their unhappiness, and position themselves as the solution.

Salvation Tells A Distinctly Scottish Story With Universal Relevance

Liam Harkins makes Danny extraordinarily compelling, because he understands the character cannot simply be played as a traditional con artist. There needs to be enough genuine belief beneath the performance to explain why Danny is capable of convincing anyone, including himself. His public persona is overflowing with confidence and grand ambitions, while his private existence is defined by financial anxiety and desperation. His overly friendly manner gradually becomes unsettling precisely because it never quite feels natural.

Stephen McMillan, meanwhile, provides an equally effective counterpoint as Scott.

Harkins finds the hollowness beneath every reassuring word, creating a character who is simultaneously personable and pathetic. Stephen McMillan, meanwhile, provides an equally effective counterpoint as Scott. Where Danny is loud, polished, and performatively confident, Scott is reserved and uncertain. McMillan gives the character a quiet vulnerability that makes his situation immediately affecting and, eventually, gut-wrenching to behold.

Nicoll's strongest achievement is turning Danny and Scott’s specific relationship into a broader examination of young men trying to figure out what comes next. Once people leave the structure of school and enter adulthood, the rules can suddenly become considerably less clear. What constitutes success? How does someone find purpose? What happens when the opportunities available to them don't match the life they imagined?

Those questions aren't uniquely Scottish, nor are they limited to men. But Salvation places them within a very recognizable Scottish environment, allowing the film to feel culturally specific without sacrificing its broader relevance. The desire to escape a stagnant life, find purpose, become successful, and believe that someone else has the blueprint for achieving it is practically universal. And all of these ideas are explored with nuance and sensitivity.

Salvation premiered at the 2026 Toronto International Film Festival.

Cast

• 

  Liam Harkins

  Daniel ‘Danny’ Carlton

• Stephen McMillan

  Scott Hammond