In an astonishing and deeply unsettling lead performance, Jonathan Majors lets viewers inside the mind of a mentally disturbed muscleman in "Magazine Dreams," which plays like "Joker" set in the bodybuilding world.

Majors plays Killian Maddox, a simmering powder keg who is ready to blow at any second. Writer-director Elijah Bynum ("Hot Summer Nights") presents his story as a cautionary tale, and Majors' mesmerizing, disquieting embodiment of the character is a potent reminder of the raw power he commands on screen.

Maddox, jacked to the nines, is a towering physical specimen. His muscles have muscles, and his abs have their own sets of abs. But his perfect physique masks his extreme sense of inner turmoil.

He hears voices in his head and is in counseling for his anger issues. He lives with and cares for his grandfather (Harrison Page), after the death of his parents in a grisly murder-suicide.

He can barely hold down a conversation, or his job as a bagger at his local grocery store. And he writes fawning fan letters to Brad Vanderhorn (Mike O'Hearn), his bodybuilding idol, which read like the correspondences from Stan to Eminem.

Maddox displays all the characteristics of an incel, and he turns to Google for questions like, "How do you make people like you?" Occasionally, this ticking time bomb hits his breaking point: he spits in a customer's pie unprompted, destroys a hardware store over a labor dispute and, in one particularly startling scene, he accosts an attacker in front of his family inside a full diner. (The mix of coke and steroids he's pumping into his system certainly aren't doing much to quell his sense of rage.)

Bynum continually shows us that Maddox is not a good guy. But the power of Majors' performance is the way he's able to bring viewers in and make them feel sympathy for this wounded character, and a scene where he goes on a date with a sweet co-worker (Haley Bennett) and scares her off is heartbreaking. And so is a scene where Maddox finally gets to meet his idol, an interaction that quickly goes south and sends him on his path of destruction.

There are heavy "Taxi Driver" overtones in this unflinching portrait, which carries additional weight due to the 2023 assault allegations against Majors. The film debuted at Sundance two years ago and was shelved when the case against him arose, and a performance which was once seen as a shoo-in for an Oscar nomination is now being seen under considerably different circumstances.

What hasn't dulled is the intensity of Majors' performance, or his commitment to this character. These "Dreams" aren't easy to shake. This is disturbing, unnerving work in an often electrifying film, and Majors leaves everything on the table.

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'MAGAZINE DREAMS'

Grade: B+

MPA rating: R (for violent content, drug use, sexual material/nudity and language)

Running time: 2:04

How to watch: In theaters March 21

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