It stars DuVall, Melanie Lynskey, Natasha Lyonne, Vincent Piazza, Jason Ritter, Ben Schwartz, Alia Shawkat, and Cobie Smulders.

[9] The idea for a story based around a marital intervention came partly from DuVall's own life; she said that she was too judgmental of her friends' lives and reluctant to face her own problems.

[13] The house where the majority of filming took place repeatedly lost power, leaving the cast and crew without air conditioning and running water on set.

[12] The Intervention had its world premiere at the 2016 Sundance Film Festival on January 26, 2016,[16] where Lynskey received a Special Jury Award for Individual Performance.

[21] Dennis Harvey of Variety gave a positive review, writing, "Clea DuVall's debut as writer-director breaks no new ground in themes or execution, but is pleasingly accomplished on all levels.

[23] Robert Abele of the Los Angeles Times found the film "unfussy, dryly amusing and sincere", and praised the performances of Lynskey and Smulders.

[25] In a review for Entertainment Weekly, Kevin P. Sullivan gave the film a B rating, writing, "The script wobbles between heavy-handed and touching, but the result is a pleasantly nostalgic throwback that's saved from its copy-cat tendencies by charismatic actors.

"[26] On the other hand, The Hollywood Reporter's Todd McCarthy found the film "bland and without consequence" and opined that DuVall ought to have brought on a co-writer to "create more distinctive characters and dialogue".

[27] Nigel M. Smith of The Guardian gave the film 2 out of 5 stars, criticizing DuVall's "misjudgment of tone" in writing it as a comedy rather than fully exploring the "messed up" characters.