Living in a van in his 30s, Alex (Mars) listens to rabid right-wing talk radio and is obsessed with YouTube star Mandy (Okatsuka), who makes sensory videos promoting peace. On the way to meet her in Oregon, he returns to his Texas hometown and discovers that John (Swaffar), who abused him as a child, isn't dead after all. Then when he goes to confront him, Alex finds that the still-towering John is now frail and debilitated from a stroke. But he sticks around, even hiring a teen (Elsaas) in an attempt to jog John's memory.

The loosely jumbled plot is punctuated with evocative, sometimes bewildering sights and sounds that tap into Alex's unsettled mind as well as his disconnection with the mundane realities of everyday life. Alex is an offbeat character who continually surprises us, a haunted young man who seems both shaken and emboldened by his circumstances. His sexuality is impossible to pin down, a blur of sauna encounters with a man (Federici) plus sex work as he orchestrates fantasies for male and female clients, then robs them.

The actors approach Mathews' minimalistic screenplay with performances that are so understated that they're open to interpretation. In particular, Mars' Alex is an enigmatic man confronting his past while living what looks like an empty existence. Are these two things related? Is it connected to the mixed messages he is getting from the media? Nicely, Mars is able to create a strong character without over-explaining anything. Side characters remain even more enigmatic, but add intriguing textures to Alex's journey.

The events depicted unfold in a swirl of memory, out of chronological order, which adds to the film's unnerving, sometimes shocking exploration of the life-long effects of child abuse. Facing his tormentor gives Alex no peace simply because John is unable to even acknowledge his presence. So he seems to be waiting for a meaningful moment in which to take his revenge, even as he knows it probably won't make anything better. These kinds of ideas add a much wider resonance, grappling with the false hopes of the American Dream itself.

On the streets of Manhattan, Jack (Donnally) is a relaxed 18-year-old who helps homeless people. He may be a hooker who robs his clients, but he draws the line at drugs. He lives in a hostel with his boyfriend Tom (Ormond), an aspiring photographer who's nervous about Jack's criminal tendencies, and they're planning a future together. In the street they meet Ken (Murphy), who has a wife (McClellan) and baby but struggles with his sexuality. He hires Jack to accompany him on a business trip to Miami, intending to help him, not sleep with him.

For a film that touches on things like prostitution, crime and drug use, Emerson's approach is oddly moralistic and timid, taking sides and shying away from anything sexual. It also has some seriously clunky plot points (there's actually a gun in a drawer), building a sense early on that something Very Bad is going to happen. Some of this is a result of Jack's careless behaviour, but the plot also spirals out to include Tom's frustration with Jack's job and Ken's escalating marital issues. As these things swell up, the film's tone shifts dramatically.

Donnally and Ormond make up for their inexperience with exuberance, creating likeable teen characters who feel like they're invincible. The chemistry between them is charming. Donnally is such a freewheeling goofball that he also creates an engaging connection with Murphy, an unusually flirty father-son dynamic as Ken tries to tame Jack's wild impulsiveness. But of course, Jack is actually loosening up Ken, seducing him. Then the plot shifts, somewhat improbably, in a foreboding direction.

As it continues, the larger issues swell up and threaten to overwhelm the more engaging character drama. Emerson clearly has quite a few urgent topics on his mind, and he weaves all of them into the narrative, sometimes in ways that feel a bit contrived. He then expects us to be outraged without exploring the reasons why we should be. This lack of nuance undermines any core message that might be in here. Still, these are important things that need to be addressed in practical, compassionate ways.

Escaping from Essex as he turns 18, Jim (Dickinson) arrives in Soho and is quickly recruited by the Raconteurs, rentboys who offer knowledgable conversations about art. Jim is too beautiful not to join them, and he has a deep love of Caravaggio paintings. But he also has Stendhal Syndrome, which causes him to faint when he sees beautiful art, sending him into visions in which he engages with Caravaggio (Cura) himself. And as he becomes a muse to the artist Max (Durden), the bigger question is when Jim will realise that everyone is using him.

Filmmaker McLean gives everything a surreal sheen, with shimmering neon and inky black shadows, plus costumes that are so fanciful that they're timeless. Sometimes this feels a little too lurid, refusing to ground anything in the real world. But allowing this atmosphere to envelop us offers some striking insight into the film's central themes about the nature of creativity. Because ultimately, this is a story about Jim learning to be an artist instead of just an object of beauty.

As in Beach Rats, Dickinson takes a character who could easily be two-dimensional and deepens him in unexpected directions. Jim is physically stunning, but has an even more intriguing soul, and Dickinson quietly uses each scene to expose his sense of humour, steely resolve and, most powerfully, his vulnerability. Even his lanky physicality is used to strong effect, adding a wry, offhanded charm to the re-creations of classic paintings in his swooning, witty hallucinations.

Some plot points feel somewhat obvious, such as how escort-turned-banker Paul (Marrett) exploits Jim's affliction for monetary gain. But because the entire story is so exaggerated, and so closely seen through Jim's eyes, it's not difficult to take these elements for what they have to say. In other words, this film isn't actually a straightforward story of a teen who leaves home and finds his way in the big bad world. It's about how all of us search for beauty, feel faint in its presence and learn to create it ourselves.

In the town of Curiosity in Cornwall, hard-nosed detective Binon (Pali) is chasing a serial killer. Schoolboy Elliott (Corney) thinks he knows the killer is a creepy gardener (Croucher), but no one listens to him. Meanwhile, hitchhiking Lee (Acharia) is attacked by a truck driver. Beer company rep Tim (Grant) struggles with an obnoxiously aggressive colleague (Sweeney). And just out of prison, Dexter (Colimeno) and his ex-con friend Al (Chukwu) are working with a swaggering thug (Blackwood) on a heist that goes bad, dragging orphaned siblings Martine and Thomas (Clarke and Rithin) into the mayhem.

These disconnected plot threads are intriguing even if it's impossible to care about characters who are so thinly developed. The script is blunt, sometimes hilariously so, and director Pickering includes all the usual cliches like a random blossoming romance, dining-table surgery, a bizarrely temporary-looking strip club and lots of gunplay, including a ridiculously clumsy shootout. All of this is shot in with leery machismo, played as a movie rather than real life.

Each actor struggles with the corny dialog, especially speeches that strain to sound vaguely Tarantino-esque. The cast is fine when they're underplaying scenes, but moments involving anger or emotion don't work. The only actors who create engaging characters are the younger ones (Corney, Acharia and Rithin), because they don't try to over-egg the drama. All of the other actors spend too much time showing the audience that they're hiding something.

The film is so patterned after hackneyed movies and TV that it's impossible to be surprised by the twists and turns of the plot. Thankfully, it's played with a blackly comical wink, including the grisly violence and scantily clad women. Then in the final 15 minutes, there are a series of revelations that are enjoyable in the sense that they divide the film into four separate thrillers, each with a sting in its tail. But the derivative approach leaves the film as a whole feeling flat.