Bring your phone and ear-buds

Rating: 1/10 (6 October 2019)

Yes folks, have your ear-buds plugged into your phone and settled in your ears and have your favorite podcast cued up with the "PLAY" button on the ready, because 20 solid minutes of this movie are nothing but Joker-to-be having laughing fits or doing slo-mo dances. That's how we know he's going crazy! Every 15 minutes or so the "plot" pauses for a shakey-cam, weird-angled, slo-mo mess of nothing while we hostages are forced to sit unengaged and watch.
No spoilers here, because the movie is simply the trailer X 100. Half-crazy weirdo in ugly, dirty city gets picked on and betrayed, then goes full-killer crazy. There is not a moment of subtlety or curiosity, nothing for you to wonder about in terms of what will happen next. Your two modes of viewership are CRINGE alternating with YAWN.
Don't tell me this is great psychology. It's NOT. Just imbue a guy with Daddy and Mommy issues, make some cliche reveals about his lousy childhood (as if we didn't know it was bad), and photograph him in one scene after another laughing insanely, dancing in slo-mo, and getting stabby/shooty.
Happy tunes from the 50s through 80s play over Joker's weirdness -- get it? It's irony! Bet you've never seen that before!
The movie is literally ugly, with muddy lighting and uncomfortable angles. Yes, I get that it's supposed to be a depressing, discomfiting story about the inside of a sicko's mind, but a better director could have depicted real life without making the movie literally hard to watch. That's largely because there is NO PSYCHOLOGY in this movie. It's just a repetitious, collage of every cliche about madness and badness since you were sitting around in your sleeping bags telling urban legends.
I hesitated to give a one-star review because people will dismiss me as a hata, but I honestly think this movie deserves it.