Joker

Verdict

A bleak, performance-driven character study with real visual style and a memorable central turn, but it’s also blunt, self-serious, and often more interested in provocation than insight. If you want a grim descent into alienation and urban decay, it delivers; if you want nuance around mental illness, politics, or comic-book mythology, it’s likely to frustrate you.

Best for

• viewers who like dark psychological dramas
• fans of antihero origin stories
• people drawn to intense lead performances
• audiences interested in 1970s-style urban paranoia

Skip if

• you want superhero action or comic-book spectacle
• you’re sensitive to exploitative depictions of mental illness
• you prefer subtle, politically coherent storytelling
• you dislike grim, oppressive tone

Overview

Joker is less a comic-book movie than a grim character study dressed in comic-book iconography. Todd Phillips leans hard into 1970s New York paranoia, using dirty streets, sickly lighting, and a relentless score to frame Arthur Fleck’s collapse into violence. Joaquin Phoenix gives the film its voltage: twitchy, wounded, and physically committed in a way that makes the character hard to ignore even when the script is blunt.

Worth noting

The movie’s biggest strength is also its biggest problem. It knows how to create discomfort and dread, but it often mistakes that discomfort for depth. Its ideas about class resentment, media spectacle, and mental illness are provocative on the surface, yet they can feel underdeveloped or opportunistic when the film reaches for larger social meaning.

Bottom line

Still, as a piece of mood, performance, and urban nightmare cinema, it’s effective. If you approach it as a toxic descent rather than a definitive statement, there’s plenty here to admire. If you want clarity, empathy, or a richer political argument, the film is much shakier.

Top Letterboxd reviews

Joao (1★) · 33439 likes

if you’ve never swam in the ocean then of course a pool seems deep.

mia lee vicino (2★) · 9605 likes

bad because -he never said joker’s trick -super-rats mentioned but never expanded on -i know the gf was a fantasy but they still made us watch him kiss her. don’t like the implication that joker fucks -posits people with mental illness as unhinged murderers when really we just want to lay in bed amidst our snack food wrappers forever -willfully ignorant + fundamental misunderstanding of revolution/ANTIFA (how are you gonna say your film “isn’t political” when characters are carrying signs

davidehrlich (2.5★) · 5573 likes

Todd Phillips’ “Joker” is unquestionably the boldest reinvention of “superhero” cinema since “The Dark Knight”; a true original that’s sure to be remembered as one of the most transgressive studio blockbusters of the 21st Century. It’s also a toxic rallying cry for self-pitying incels, and a hyper-familiar origin story so indebted to “Taxi Driver” and “The King of Comedy” that Martin Scorsese probably deserves an executive producer credit. It’s possessed by the kind of provocative spirit that’s seldom found in

Patrick Willems (2★) · 5520 likes

I have this whole series of YouTube videos that are like “what if Werner Herzog directed Ant-Man” or “what if the show Gotham was a teen drama” or “what if there was a gritty Tintin reboot.” Anyway Joker is like if someone made a feature-length version of one of those.

Nick (3★) · 5030 likes

Some people a few rows behind me applauded when Joker said society

Themes

alienation, mental breakdown, urban decay, class resentment, media spectacle, violence and nihilism, identity collapse, social isolation

Topics

psychological drama, crime thriller, antihero, urban noir, 1970s-inspired, bleak tone, character study, social alienation, unreliable reality, prestige melodrama