Our Hero, Balthazar review – a darkly comic satire of incel culture and gun violence

A poser activist and an online troll strike up a homoerotic friendship in Safdie brothers collaborator Oscar Boyson’s scabrous story

‘I think it’s nice to be part of a community” is how Manhattan rich kid Balthazar (Jaeden Martell) justifies his favourite hobby: posting tear-soaked videos in which he sociopathically pretends to be one of the horde of American youth lamenting the national epidemic of gun violence. Longtime Safdie brothers producer Oscar Boyson brings that kind of scabrous attitude – not just to school shootings, but to social media, “incel”, self-help and US salesman cultures – in this squirming, energetically directed black comedy that is reminiscent of the take-no-prisoners libertarian satire of Jason Reitman’s early films.

Balthazar is trying to impress his crush, Eleanor (Pippa Knowles), with whom he enthusiastically plays the role of the victim in school-shooting drills. After he blows his chances by attempting to make out with her while showing her raw footage of the latest massacre, he ups his game. Preventing the next bloodbath would truly prove his commitment to the cause, and a trollish incel called deathdealer_16, who has been goading him in his chat, seems as if he might be ready to blow. Catfishing him by posing as a comely maiden of the internet, Balthazar sets up an IRL rendezvous.
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