‘Magazine Dreams’ review [Sundance 2023]

Jonathan Majors gives a jaw-dropping, star-making performance in this deeply dark drama set in the world of amateur bodybuilding as a young loner attempts to become famous for having the perfect Adonis physique.

There’s a moment towards the end of Elijah Bynum’s second feature where you know you’re watching something special. It’s not a big set piece, nor does the filmmaker employ any elaborate trickery or ambitious camera moves. It is two people in a room, the scene the culmination of 90 minutes of foreboding darkness where we, the viewer, have been waiting for some truly nasty shit to happen. Majors’ Killian Maddox, a towering six-feet-plus, and 250-pounds of pure muscle is confronting his past, which has affected his troubled present and put a huge dampener on his future.

Maddox is a thirty-something loner who lives at home with his grandfather (Harrison Page), whom he also cares for, and works part-time at the local supermarket. The rest of the time he’s in the gym pumping iron, as they say, pushing his body to the absolute limit, albeit, we see, with the help of anabolic steroids, which he injects frequently. He enters local, amateur contests but he dreams of the big time, his idol, professional Brad Vanderhorn, a very famous bodybuilder who he writes to regularly. He is suffering from some anger issues and regularly sees a therapist. An early scene shows him unleashing his wrath on a local paint store, which has not supplied or applied enough paint for walls in his grandfather’s house, an event that will have repercussions later on.

The film is a constant tension builder, two hours of a constant barrage of very uncomfortable scenes, so perfectly staged and acted that they are also a delight to digest All build and build to a definite ending that you won’t see coming and, in fact, Bynum’s screenplay never takes you in the direction you expect, all to the film’s benefit.

Majors is terrific, the character of Maddox is so perfectly constructed both physically (he apparently consumed 6000 calories and worked out 2/3 times a day for four months) and mentally. He’s utterly convincing in every scene and deserves all of the plaudits that are definitely coming his way. My hope is that in a year filled with two blockbuster movies roles in two franchises (Creed and Marvel), this will be picked up by a distributor to allow it to thrive come awards season later this year. He is that good.

I imagine that the film will be one that polarises audiences – it is a long film, and does feel long, and the narrative does sway into controversial subject matter but, along with the similarly themed indie film Muscle from a couple of years back that also revolved around themes of toxic masculinity in the gym environment, it’ll be with you for days after the credits roll.

There are echoes of Scorsese – think Taxi Driver or The King Of Comedy, as well as hints of Tarantino and even Refn. This is one of the stronger movies to come out of Sundance this year (pun intended), and a big contender for one of the top prizes, too. All eyes on Majors, though, a big star already, but an even bigger one in the making and perhaps the one to watch in 2023.

Magazine Dreams was reviewed at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival.