Forget Joker: here’s the film you should see about an extremist loner
While Todd Phillips’ vacuous DC origins tale fails to go beneath its grimy surface, low-budget drama Cuck offers a braver alternative
This weekend, a film about an unstable loner pushed to the edge by an uncaring society comes to theaters. This figure, a virginal loser whose only female contact comes from tenderly sponge-bathing his elderly shut-in mother, feels like he’s been cheated by a world out of order. He exudes rage outward in every direction: to the girl next door failing to reciprocate his crush, to the absentee father leaving him without a role model, to the celebrity idol he worships until he ends up the butt of their joke. With nothing to lose and a heart full of hatred, the angry white man finally snaps, smearing on some face paint and going on a shocking rampage of gunfire. For all its extreme subject matter, this film has captured one particularly toxic dimension of the national attitude, a vitally relevant work of popular art for better and for worse.
Related: Why so stupid: how Joker is too juvenile to be provocative