Our Hero, Bathazar (Oscar Boyson, 2026)
You could replace the central issue with any piece or crumble of the pile of shit we’re all buried under today and the thesis of this movie would still work. That being said in its analysis of its chosen malaise — school shooting, men’s loneliness, manosphere — Oscar Boyson’s feature debut builds a world so true albeit so cynical that the subject still feels fresh, unexamined. Boyson isn’t interested in the aesthetic of the manosphere — pumping iron, picking up women — and neither is he interested in the cancerous growth that is the ‘successful grifter’ because these are — for all the revulsion they inspire — easy targets and, when handled carelessly, can amount to an advertisement of the problem rather than a critique.
In fact it is as if Boyson is uninterested in the toxic men of it all, instead focussing on how the manosphere generates an entire economy of appearances: another site for class-warfare. The film follows two boys at either end of the economy: a trust fund kid — our hero, Balthazar — desperate to appear woke and, a trailer park kid eager to tap-dance for some rent money.
Scene after scene Boyson keeps his finger on the trigger. At the halfway mark I wasn’t even sure of the grifter or the grift. The whole affair felt like a game of russian roulette, guns passing hands, empty clicks, but just me flinching, until of course the barrel goes off.
With that bleak ending I think Boyson makes us wish for a tamer outcome, where the grifts all work out and people just go their separate ways. But then again, is that not just as bleak? For Boyson, the world is a pyramid scheme and you best hope that you’re not at the bottom.
In my opinion Our Hero, Balthazar completes a trifecta with Red Rooms (Pascal Plante, 2023) and Predators (David Osit, 2025). Each film is interested in the culture of discourse, how we the audience glom onto real world tragedies as compulsive voyeurs with a desperate need to see and, more importantly, be seen.