Lonely young men on the internet, gun culture, school shootings and a need to be seen are themes colliding in Oscar Boyson‘s disturbingly twisted feature film debut Our Hero, which might just be a little too real to be a comfortable watch for many. The name is a bit ambiguous as the title character is not exactly the shining definition of a “hero,” but I suppose that is the point.
Premiering at Tribeca last year, this is a movie born out of the darker corners of the internet and social media but also an online trend of fake empathy. It zeroes in on entitled and wealthy NYC teen Balthazar (Jaeden Martell), who finds pleasure in his ability to cry on cue and fake great humane empathy for victims of shootings in various threads on his computer in his lush room overlooking the New York skyline. He gets off on it. It follows all-too-realistic school-shooter drills in his private school and an unhealthy obsession with a mysterious poster (and poser?) who talks a big game about plans to shoot up a school.
Perhaps in an attempt to prove himself a hero to an activist female classmate Eleanor (Pippa Knowles), who is horrified by his gross interactions on the web, and basically ignored by his upscale mother Nicole (Jennifer Ehle), who decides to go off on a trip with new boyfriend rather than celebrate her son’s birthday weekend, Balthy impulsively decides to hook up with this guy who turns out to be a troubled incel named Solomon Jackson (Asa Butterfield) living with his grandmother (a very fine Becky Ann Baker) in a Texas trailer park. Solomon is a lonely internet dweller with easy access to guns, a dead-end job he loses at a local convenience store where his advances are rejected by cashier Taylor (a terrific Anna Baryshnikov) and who seems ill-equipped and frustrated to join as a salesman for his demanding ex-amateur porn star father Beaver Jackson’s (appropriately sleazy Chris Bauer) new energy powder business. In other words, the guy (and everyone around him) is a mess, but Balthy may be as well, in way over his head in this deep-red Texas circle, especially when his true mission starts to unravel.
Boyson, a disciple of the Safdie brothers, impressively mixes black comedy with real-life consequences for two mismatched teens who nevertheless learn to play off each other’s internal need for acceptance and recognition, no matter how completely different the worlds from which they each come. Whether Balthy is really sincere about stopping a school shooting and reaping the rewards he thinks that would bring, or whether Solomon is really just full of bravado and using violent threats to mask his own inadequacies become the central questions in this shotgun marriage of two misguided young men who each come out from the safe cover of their laptops to a real world careening out of their control. A twisted buddy movie if ever there was one, what support they can’t find in their own screwed-up families, they try to make up for in the oddest pairing since Ratso Rizzo met Joe Buck and New York met Texas in Midnight Cowboy.
Try as hard as you might to resist this oddball pairing, the superb acting of Martell (also a producer) and a transformative Butterfield simply will not allow you to look away. Martell (It) manages to bring real dimension to a kid who sports in dangerous games in a desperate need to be noticed but also might be a sociopath-in-training. Butterfield is unrecognizable for those who remember this British-born star as the young actor from The Boy in the Striped Pajamas and Hugo, a complete immersion into a lost soul, pathetic loser to some, who ultimately is a tragic victim of his own making. Both are the unfortunate byproducts of a generation hooked on their iPhones, the constantly changing screens in front of them and a life in the dark shadows of social media that turns all too real all too fast.
Producers are Martell, Boyson, Camilleri, Jon Wroblewski, David Duque-Estrada, Miles Skinner and Alex Hughes.
Title: Our Hero, Balthazar
Distributor: Picturehouse & W/G Pictures
Release date: March 27, 2026 (NY Limited); April 3, 2026 (LA and other cities)
Director: Oscar Boyson
Screenwriters: Ricky Camilleri and Oscar Boyson
Cast: Jaeden Martell, Asa Butterfield, Chris Bauer, Jennifer Ehle, Anna Baryshnikov, Noah Centineo, Becky Ann Baker, Avan Jogia, Pippa Knowles
Rating: R
Running time: 1 hr 36 min