If you’ve ever heard that therapy is Hell…then I advise you not to listen to whomever told you that. Their advice is not serving your best interests.
But in this case it really is Hell, because a mad angry bastard with a gun (Dylan Baldwin) hijacks a group meeting for what is, in all but name, Narcotics Anonymous and proceeds to threaten, degrade and psychologically torture the attendees. Inevitably, dark secrets come to the surface, various attendees have their bravery and their allegiance tested, and we discover that the gunman has a dark personal backstory that explains why he wishes to terrorise a group of people who, while they might have made mistakes, are surely taking the necessary steps to self-improvement already.
But ah well. I think he comes from the Jigsaw school of self-improvement, and, if this is a Saw movie, then we have our Amanda in lead Jennifer Aries: not that she joins the villain’s side by the end, simply that she is a troubled but strong character and a standout performance in a film that is otherwise lacking on that front.
I will say this for The Group: it’s short and it doesn’t drag. The plot may be bare-bones and the performances mostly amateurish, but we get straight into the action, it doesn’t really let up, and when the story ends the film does too. Plenty of other productions could stand to take a lesson from The Group in that regard, though probably in that regard only.