Enjoying this movie requires the arcane ability, once everyday knowledge, of accepting that portrayal does not imply, or certainly equal, endorsement. You wouldn’t know this from a brief glimpse over the pop culture commentariat, who feverishly insisted that Joker would glorify incel violence. After the film’s release, their dreams of copycat violence dashed, these claims slunk disappointedly away.

For the few commentators aware of Cuck, which takes these themes even further, the wailing and gnashing of teeth was similar, if a bit more muted due to the movie’s lack of reach.

The film stars Ronnie (played ably by Zachary Ray Sherman), an initially pitiable and eventually contemptible loser. He lives with his mother, barely manages to hold down his menial job, and takes solace in all he has: his gun, his fleshlight, and his alternate online persona as a confident right wing commentator for a small audience.

Eventually Ronnie’s luck seems to turn, and his YouTube channel takes off as Ronnie is embraced by the alt right community and one of its charismatic leaders. Meanwhile his creepy obsession with a neighborhood woman apparently hits paydirt, as she invites him into her bedroom for a paid amateur pornography shoot.

Yet this arrangement quickly takes a turn for the worse, as Ronnie is cast as a cuckold husband, forced to watch as a series of more masculine men (including the woman’s real husband) have sex with her. The scenes are increasingly humiliating for Ronnie, and culminate in his involvement being outed to his burgeoning online conservative following.

Ronnie’s anger and frustration steadily builds in a very palpable way over the course of the film, and this all culminates in a depressing, if realistic, outcome, and a conclusion that feels fully inevitable by the time it arrives.

None of this is to glorify violence, or the alt-right, or incels. But it is a frank and honest depiction of how someone like Ronnie might wind up doing something terrible in the real world. Any measure of sympathy you might feel for this main character does not, and should not, in any way override an obvious understanding that he is not a good guy.

It’s a story that deals very directly with racism, misplaced animus for immigrants, hyper- (and hypo-) masculinity, and the kind of problems our society may increasingly have to reckon with. Many of these stories are worth telling, even if they make you uncomfortable. This one genuinely is.