To revel successful chaos without an first captious position astir weapon civilization aliases societal media addiction is nan constituent of head Oscar Boyson’s characteristic debut, “Our Hero, Balthazar,” co-written pinch Ricky Camilleri, a movie wrestling pinch some topics. The “Good Time” shaper and “Uncut Gems” executive producer‘s first film arsenic a head stars “Midnight Special” and “It” breakout Jaeden Martell arsenic a spoiled New York City private-school edgelord adept astatine making himself outcry connected self-cue for his online followers.

Balthazar’s (Martell) compulsion toward on-iPhone faux tears contributes to a wide satire of an ever-widening genre of curated suffering wrought by societal media users. The ones who lather themselves up complete causes (see Selena Gomez’s tearful direct-to-camera confession astir Trump’s deportation policies, which went viral earlier this year) to awesome their virtues, and often emptily aliases astatine slightest confused.

Boyson captures this phenomenon, mostly poking alternatively than prodding, until nan film’s melodramatic and very bloody decorativeness puts a not moralizing but possibly prescriptive headdress connected nan endgame of its ain expanding satire: “Our Hero, Balthazar” follows Balthy, arsenic he’s known by his absentee mother (a perfectly uptight, power-dressed Jennifer Ehle), into a acheronian obsession pinch nan besides biblically named Solomon (Asa Butterfield), an net troll pinch aspirations of shooting up his Texas schoolhouse and possibly more.

Balthy, though, doesn’t person galore virtues, and present nan world of edgelords and online rage-baiters is simply a scuzzy 1 that cinematographer Christopher Messina and editors Nate DeYoung and Erin DeWitt plunge america into pinch each nan subtlety of nan Safdies’ clock-ticking New York crime odyssey “Good Time.” The synthy, pulsing electro creation people by James William Blades further brings to mind those early Safdie movies, now generational touchstones for emerging filmmakers.

Boyson doesn’t wholly peel distant from nan Benny-and-Josh-established artistic that’s now nan expected parlance of millennial filmmakers seeking to seizure an unvarnished, on-edge New York — Boyson, aft all, co-founded nan Safdies’ Elara Pictures earlier nan brothers divided creatively. The stylized filmmaking becomes its ain benignant of captious constituent of position here, revving up nan assemblage and astir apt encouraging moreover a fewer successful nan room to endorse its agonized worldview via nan movie’s compelling craft. “Our Hero, Balthazar” is some a cautionary communicative and an entertainment, and really Boyson straddles nan highwire cutting betwixt those 2 opposing forces is what makes this promising debut astir fascinatingly restless.

It’s coming day, and erstwhile “Our Hero, Balthazar” begins, Balthy is weeping into his iPhone camera. “This loneliness is sidesplitting me,” he says. But it’s each fakery, arsenic staged arsenic nan active-shooter drills astatine Balthy’s backstage Manhattan school, crocodile tears welled up to weaponize his narcissism against nan bleeding hearts of passive, smash-the-freaking-like-button societal media sheep. Balthy is hardly attended to by his azygous mom, Nicole (Ehle), who’s truthful distracted by a romance pinch a rising politico (David M. Raine) that she goes retired of municipality pinch nan feline connected Balthy’s day weekend. Meanwhile, Balthy’s nonexistent begetter conscionable cuts nan checks while remaining upstate successful Westchester.

Balthy appears to person nary societal life extracurricular nan internet-only interactions wrong his high-rise chamber overlooking nan city. He’s attracted to an activistic classmate (Pippa Knowles), who sounds disconnected connected nan “monetization of narcissism” aft 1 of those school-shooting drills, but he alienates her wholly aft trying to make retired pinch her while watching dark-web-dispatched closed-circuit footage of an existent Arkansas schoolhouse massacre. (As successful past year’s “Red Rooms,” astir a female perversely drawn to snuff films, Boyson keeps nan carnage off-camera, letting nan sounds of guns popping and screams overheard ooze into our imagination.)

Balthy’s preoccupation pinch schoolhouse shootings entwines him complete Instagram exchanges pinch Texas-dwelling convenience shop worker Solomon, played by an unrecognizable Butterfield successful brassy bleach-blond hairsbreadth successful hopeless request of a rinse of purple shampoo. Solomon is lonely, too, ignored by his father, a Frank Mackey-type motivational speaker who utilized to beryllium an amateur porn prima and now peddles a powdery testosterone supplement called Thrush. The angsty teen, who’s sewage acold excessively overmuch entree to firearms and fantasizes astir blowing up his peers, lives pinch his ailing, Franzia-wine-box-guzzling grandma (Becky Ann Baker, hilarious and sweatily confined to an easy chair). He’s loathed by (and possibly successful emotion with) his coworker, played by a crassly funny Anna Baryshnikov who again trashily steals nan segment arsenic she did successful “Love Lies Bleeding,” location arsenic a lesbian stalker pinch gingivitis.

So Balthy, utilizing each nan AI chicanery disturbingly astatine his disposal, poses arsenic a nympho online female activity bot to lure Solomon’s attraction via DMs and to yet meet up pinch him successful a sad pouch of agrarian Texas. Balthy goads Solomon’s forming Oedipal desire to execution his father, while cautioning arsenic Solomon suits up for nan kill, “It’s not moreover a schoolhouse — nobody’s gonna care.” Balthy, meanwhile, hopes that successful stopping Solomon’s parallel planned schoolhouse shooting he tin someway triumph backmost nan affections of Eleanor (Knowles), who begs Balthy to extremity reaching retired but seemingly hasn’t learned really to artifact a caller.

Is Balthy a hero? Is Solomon a murderer? Or are they some conscionable hopeless casualties of an pandemic of over-interneted incel-adjacents who’ve turned being online astatine each these days into a pervasive existential risk? Car chases and constabulary standoffs blare and beam from Solomon’s grandmother’s TV, giving “Our Hero, Balthazar” an ever-on-the-edge-of-apocalypse vibe that literalizes our society-addling fixation connected spectacle unit and if-it-bleeds-it-leads cablegram news, wherever nan past calamity is nan latest news item.

Though hardly transgressive if you’ve kept up pinch nan caller harvest of indies that blend New York-at-night thriller pinch Gen Z-skewering societal messaging (Olmo Schnabel’s queer Manhattan caper “Pet Shop Boys” from past twelvemonth comes to mind), nan contradictions successful nan thrilling pleasures of this film’s trade alongside its darkly comic informing missive astir weapon civilization make for a potent if yet ambivalent first venture. But it’s ambivalence by design, arsenic Boyson ends his movie connected a painfully inevitable, macabrely funny finale that brings nan full point afloat circle, Balthy erstwhile again crying connected his ain bid for each nan world (or astatine slightest a fistful of followers and news watchers) to see.

Martell makes a beardown melodramatic belief arsenic a earnestly fucked-up kid, but is he much fucked-up than immoderate kid — aliases immoderate of america — is lately? It’s Butterfield’s pathos and toxic teendom that springiness “Our Hero, Balthazar” its affectional anchor, if nan movie has 1 astatine all. Boyson seems much enamored pinch nan pyrotechnics of filmmaking — and arsenic a first-time characteristic director, why wouldn’t he be? — than pinch sticking to an affectional landing. “Our Hero, Balthazar” isn’t acold by immoderate means, but nan consequence comes disconnected arsenic much ethnographic successful reside than nan in-your-face bravado of nan attack would suggest.

Grade: B-

“Our Hero, Balthazar” premiered astatine nan 2025 Tribeca Festival. It is presently seeking U.S. distribution.