Jaeden Martell is an edgelord – ryan

To revel in anarchy with an initial critical perspective about gun culture or social media addiction is the point of the director oscar boyson’s feature, “Our hero, Balthazar,” Co-Written with Ricky Camilleri, a Movie Wrestling with Both topics. The “good time” Producer and “Uncut gems” Executive Producer’s First Film as a director Stars “Midnight Special” and “It” breakout jaeden martell as a spoiled City Private-School Edgelord ADEPT at Making Himself Cry Self-Celest Online Followers.

Balthazar’s (Martell) Compulsion Toward on-IPHONE FAUX TEARS CONTRRIBUTES TO A BROAD SATIRE OF AN EVER-WIDENING GENRE OF CUATED SUFFERING WROUGHT BY SOCIAL MEDIA USSERS. The Ones WHO LATHERELVES UP Over Causes (See Selena Gomez’s Tearful Direct-to-Camera Confesses About Trump’s Deportation Police, Which Went viral Earlier This Year) to Signal Their Virtue or at Least Confused.

Boyson Captures This Phenomenon, Mostly Poking Rather than Prodding, Until the Film’s Dramatic and Very Bloody Finis a not moralizing but spreads on the endgame of its expanding satire: “Our hero, Balthazar” Folows Balthy, As He Known by His. Mother (A Perfectly Uptight, Power-Dresssed Jennifer Ehle), Into a Dark Obsession with the Also BibliCally Named Solomon (Asa Butterfield), an Internet Troll with aspirations of Shooting Up His School and Maybe More.

BALTHY, THOUGH, DOESN’T HAVE MANY VIRTORY, AND OPERTED THE WORLD OF EDGELDORS AND ONLINE RAGE-BaITERS IS A SCUZZY ONE THAT CINEMATOGRAPER Christopher Messina and EDITORS Nate Deyoung and Erin dewitt plunge us into with all the safdies’ clock Odyssey “Good Time.” The Synthy, Puling Electro Art Score by James William Blades Further Brings to Mind Those Early Safdie Movies, Now Generational Touchstones for Emerging Filmmakers.

Boyson doesn’t entirery Peel Away from the Benny-JoSh-Astabished aesthetic than the next Parlance of Millennial Filmmakers Seeking to Capture an Unvarnished, On-Edge New York-Boyson, AFTER ALL, CO-FOINTED ‘ELARES DIFS DIFS DIZH. Split creatively. The stylized filmmaking Becomes Its Own Sort of Critical Point of View here, revction up the audience and probably encuraaging a few in the room to endorse its agonized Worldview via the Compelling Craft. “Our Hero, Balthazar” is bot a cautionary tale and an entertainment, and how boyson straddles the highwire cutting between thinks two oposing forces is what Makes this promisive mos fascinatingly restless.

It ‘Present Day, and when “Our Hero, Balthazar” Begins, Balthy is Weeping Into Hiss Camera. “This Loneliness is Killing Me,” he Says. But it is all fakery, as staged as the active-shooter drills at Balthy’s Private Manhattan School, crocodile tears well up to weaponize his narcissism against the bleeding hearts of passes, smash-freeing-button social media Sheep. Balthy is Barely Attended to By HIS Single Mom, Nicole (Ehle), who’s SO distracted by a romance with a rising politico (David M. Raine) that she goes with the guy on Balthy’s Birthday Weekend. Meanwhile, Balthy’s Nonexistant Father Just Cuts the Control Control Remaining Upstate in Westchester.

Balty appears to have no social life outside the internet-only interactions inside his high-rise bedroom overlooking the city. He’s Attracted to an Activist Classmate (Pippa Knowles), Who Sounds off on the “MONATIZATION OF NARCISISM” AFTER ONE OF THose School-Shooting DRILLS, but he alienates her entirele after making ut with her while while darc-web-dyspatched closed of an actual Arkansas School Massacre. (As in Last Year’s “Red Rooms,” About a Woman Perverse Drawn to Snuff Films, Boyson Keeps the Carnage Off-Camera, Letting the Sounds of Guns Popping and Screams Oeno Into Our Imagination.)

Balthy’s Preoccupation with School Shootings Entwines Him Over Instagram Exchange with Texas-Dwelling Convenience Store Solomon, Played by An Unrecognisable Butterfield in Brasy Bleach-blond Hair Needse of a Rinse of Purple Shampoo. Solomon Is Lonely, Too, Ignored by His Father, A Frank Mackey-Type Motivational Speaker who used to be an amateur porn and now peddles a powerery testosterone supplementary called thrush. The Angsy Teen, Who Got Far Too Much Access to Firearms and Fantasizes About Bowing Up HIS Peers, Lives with His Ailing, Franzia-Wine-Guzzling Grandmother (Becky Ann Baker, Hillary and Sweatily Confined to An EASY Chair). He’s Loathed by (and spreads in love with) his coworker, played by a Crassly funny anna Baryshnikov who again trashly steals the scenes as she did in “Love Lies Bleeding,” there as a lesbian stalker with gingivitis.

So Balthy, USING ALL The AI ​​Chicanery Disturbingly at HIS DISPOSAL, poses as a nympho online female sex to lure solomon’s attention via dms and to eventtually Meet with Him in a Sad Pocket of Rural Texas. Balthy Goads Solomon’s Forming Oedipal Desire to Murder His Father, while cautioning as solomon suits up for the kill, “IT’S NOTE EVENT A SCHOOL – NOBody’s Gonna Care.” Balthy, Meanwhile, Hopes that in Stopping Solomon’s Parallel Planned School Shooting He Canhow Win Back the Affecations of Eleanor (Knowles), WHO BALTHY TO STOP OUT But SEEMINGLY HASN’t Learned How to BuHow to Click A Caller.

Is Balthy a Hero? Is Solomon A Murderer? Ory they all just hopless casualties of an epidemic of overneted incel-adjacent who tourned being online at all these doys into a pervasive existential risk? Car Chassis and Police Standoffs Blare and Beam from Solomon’s Grandmother’s TV, Giving “Our Hero, Balthazar” an Ever-on-Eide-of-Apocalyps vibe that Literalizes Our Society-Addling on Spectacle Violence and IF-Bleeds-Bleads Cable News, Cable News. Last tragedy is the latest news Item.

THOUGD HARDLY TRANSGRESSIVE IF YOU’VE KEPT UP WITH THE RECENT CROP OF INDIES THAT BLEND NEW YORK-AT-NIGHT THRILLER WITH GEN Z-SKEWERING Social Messaging (Olmo Schnabel’s Queer Manhattan Caper “Pet Last Last Comes to Mind), The Contradicts in the Thrilling pleasures of this movie craft alongside it Darkly comic warning letter about gun make for a pott ultimately ambivalent first venture. But it is ambivalence by design, as boyson ends his movie on a painfull inevitable, macabrely Funny finale that brings the whole Full circle, Balthy Once Crying on His Own Command for All the World (or at least a handful of followers and news.

Martell Makes a Strong drama impression as a serious fucked-up Kid, but is he more fucked-up than any Kid-or any of us-is lately? Its Butterfield’s Pathos and Toxic Tendom That Give “Our Hero, Balthazar” Its Emotional Anchor, if the Film has one at all. Byson seems more enamored with the pyrotechnics of filmmaking-and as a first-time feature director, why would he be? – than with sticking to an emotional landing. “Our Hero, Balthazar” isn’t Cold by any means, but the result comes off as more ethnographic in tone than the in -your-face bravado of the Approach Suggest.

Grade: b-

“Our Hero, Balthazar” Premiered at the 2025 Tribeca Festival. It is currently seeking us distribution.