Killian Maddox (Jonathan Majors) has dreams of greatness.  An amateur body builder, he writes constantly to his idol, Brad Vanderhorn (Mike O’Hearn), promising to be with him on stage some day soon, but his letters go unanswered.  Striving for fame, Killian continues to push himself and his limits, blowing past any breaking point and relationships with his ailing, widowed father, William (Harrison Page) and budding girlfriend Jessie (Haley Bennett) in pursuit of his ultimate dream. 

Elijah Bynum writes and directs Magazine Dreams, a highly lauded titled that premiered at the 2023 edition of the Sundance Film Festival and was picked up by Searchlight Pictures as an awards hopeful, only to later be dropped by the distributer in the wake of multiple allegations levied against its star and further complications from the dual SAG-AFTRA/WGA strike.  Briarcliff Entertainment picked up distribution rights to the 123-minute drama, placing the taboo title in over 800 screens ahead of its VOD release in the spring of 2025. 

Majors leads the character study with a ferociousness not often lent to his previous work, oftentimes playing in a softer, quieter role, or sharing the spotlight, or caked up in layers of CGI slop in some version of the multiverse.  To be clear, Majors has proven his chops as a leading man, but Magazine Dreams offered the actor total control over the course of the film and the narrative by providing him little to hide behind.  He rises to the challenge, and while some of his performance choices may take some getting used to – possibly, also, a reaction to what was on the page and the direction he received from Bynum – audiences will soon be captivated by this tragic and downright harrowing spiral.  Majors presents Killian as a troubled young man, and the script provides us with some framework of a history of violence and aggression, but the line between either developmental or social delays and a desperate adherence to various coping skills from sessions of court mandated therapy is blurred.  However the seed for this aspect of Majors’ performance was sowed, the actor provided fertile ground for it to grow and soon audiences become endeared to this man that is good hearted but constantly being kicked down by a cruel and unforgiving society that has no sympathy for him. 

Bynum provides his star with a rich and deep text; a courtesy that does not overflow as much to his supporting characters, but in a world where Killian Maddox is a star, it makes sense that everyone and everything else simply orbits around him.  Killian, however, is not so much a sun in this metaphor as he is a raging black hole, bringing everyone down with him in a furious display.  There is a point where Bynum almost feels like he is piling on to Killian and Magazine Dreams borders on a work of trauma porn, but Bynum builds up his audience so that we always believe Killian is just one small step away from being recognized as a champion.  We are following that same silver lining which has enraptured Killian, and it is because of that carefully tended solidarity which we forge with our brash and brazen hero that we do find ourselves in his corner and rooting for his success. 

With that base established, Magazine Dreams becomes a horror movie in much the same way that Todd Phillips’ Joker (2019) becomes a horror movie, albeit without the clown makeup and the glossy sheen of the comic book page that otherwise allows us to separate ourselves from the anarchy that ensues on screen.  Killian’s story is much more personal than Arthur Fleck’s as he is not drumming up the masses, but rather steering his legacy by taking revenge into his own hands.  With that being said, Bynum’s punch to his audiences’ gut does not land with such punishing accuracy as Phillips’, or by extension any of the searing portraits of masculinity gone awry painted by Martin Scorsese, Paul Schrader, or Stanley Kubrick.  Instead, Bynum’s script ends with a glimmer of compassion and hope about it  which, while a nice change of pace, feels tonally antithetical to the rest of the narrative.  We see Killian checking in with his parole officer, and we know he has outlets to channel his emotions and a sense of responsibility and duty back at home, but these do not play a large enough role in the overall narrative to impart such a seismic change in the final minutes of Killian’s downward spiral that he is able to pull himself out of it.  While it is, again, refreshing, not too see a story about a young black man being continually failed by the systems, left behind, stuck navigating a destructive path without any true meaningful guidance, and eventually punished for it, this sunny resolution to Killian’s story is not supported strongly enough on the page. After witnessing a story that was trying to forge ahead into new territory, its final moments are a breakneck 180 to what was established and it lands with the same groaning disappointment had the final shot been Killian awakening in a start from a bad dream. 

Magazine Dreams is still a well crafted film and a humongous step up from Bynum’s first feature – the unfairly and gratuitously maligned – Hot Summer Nights (2017).  It tells an important story, but tries to do a little too much so its impact overall is weakened.  The individual moments, however, are nothing short of harrowing; under-diagnosed anger issues, civil vigilantism, the dark side of hero worship, and the self-fulfilling prophecy of destruction which so often lower income communities find themselves on the track of.  Bynum’s heart is always in the right place with this story, both in terms of how he treats Killian with a sliver of grace that few others in his world will allow him, as well as his condemnation of how people in Killian’s position are pushed aside instead of given the help they need.  Notably, Bynum never lets Killian off easy, he grows disappointed in this character when he fails to stand up to the challenges laid out before him, but Bynum also never gives up on this young man, either, and that perseverance permeates out from the screen and onto the audience so that we adopt a similar stance of wanting to see Killian succeed.  It is a slight perversion of the underdog story, but Magazine Dreams holds up a grimy mirror forcing us to confront with issues that so often would be swept away and considered dealt with once they are out of mind until an eventual tragedy strikes, followed by the dumbfounded questioning of “how could this happen here?” and the traditional serving up of thoughts and prayers before returning to our regularly scheduled pattern of inaction.