And so, the heat rises, the rival campaigns grow more vicious, widespread misinformation takes hold, protests erupt against the police and in opposition to racial injustice, and all hell breaks loose—before the film rampages into an explosive third act that swaps the trappings of a slow-burn, politically edged western for a full-blown, hell-for-leather, bullet-dodging, blood-soaked crime caper à la No Country for Old Men. (Though, in terms of the quality of filmmaking, you shouldn’t really make that latter comparison.) All the while, we’re inundated with pandemic-era references (“essential” business meetings; illegal gatherings; long, socially distanced lines to pick up basic supplies; roadside COVID tests), Easter eggs, endless doom-scrolling, mind-bending TikTok videos, and an all-consuming sense of claustrophobia.

If all of this sounds exhausting, it most certainly is—and for what is, for all intents and purposes, supposed to be a satire, it’s also strangely unfunny. Granted, punchlines about Black Lives Matter rallies, anti-racist rhetoric, notions of “dismantling whiteness,” people listing their pronouns on Zoom, and perceived political correctness gone too far might elicit a laugh or two from a largely European and international Cannes crowd (and it did, at least in the screening I was in), but it’s difficult to see it flying in the US or UK, particularly considering the current political landscape. The decision to mention George Floyd’s death, in particular—and in relation to it inspiring teenagers, framed as misguided and virtue-signaling, to protest something that, as Joe says, “didn’t happen here”—is highly questionable at best.

In Aster’s defence, he also takes aim at the right—at the general Trumpian fervor, the deranged theories, and the exploitation of the vulnerable and chronically online—but the film’s politics are muddled and not especially interesting. Joe is at the center of our story for what feels like a painfully long two-and-a-half-hour run time, and yet we don’t really understand him. He’s not Cate Blanchett’s Lydia Tár, gleefully skewering Juilliard students; he’s a mostly bumbling, hapless has-been who can’t spell.

It all results in something that feels incredibly pointless: a literal regurgitation of a time we all remember all too clearly, which revels in its hallucinatory, farcical chaos but features no new, thought-provoking insights or observations. It’s just triggering; a clumsy, almost childish shout into the void. Movies don’t, of course, have to be about escapism, but why should audiences subject themselves to this divisive, conspiracy-ravaged hellscape when it’s basically the same one we still live in now?