Labeling Jonathan Majors‘s turn in “Magazine Dreams” “deeply disturbing” is the epitome of understatement.

He plays a body builder whose on-the-spectrum awkwardness and his obsession with building his body and competing with it, an obsession augmented with mood-altering steroids, puts the viewer on edge from start to finish.

We know this guy’s a ticking time bomb, and the movie has the explosions to prove it.

Taking into account Majors’s recent past, violence against a woman proven in court, we can’t help but feel we’re watching a wound-too-tight artist flirting with the most dangerous corners of his personality as he descends deep into The Method.

Now this 2023 Sundance sensation is finally in theaters, a movie that could play a part in launching a Majors comeback. Based on the work, that could certainly happen. But who knows how the public and Hollywood will take to him leaning into a darkness that might not have been his healthiest role choice ever?

Killian Maddux is a bulked-up Angelino whose back story is barely sketched-in. He lives with his infirm Vietnam vet grandpa (Harrison Page), consumes 6000 calories a day, works out in a local gym and practices his poses in his garage gym/rehearsal space.

Killian is a body builder, “the most demanding sport,” when it comes to constant muscle development and body sculpting, and yet very much a beauty pageant — highly-strung narcissists on parade.

An introvert like Killian, who can’t smile naturally, has an even greater mountain to climb.

Killian has a plan — “place” in a regional competition, get his “professional” card to compete for big money and “get on magazine” covers.

“This is the most important thing I will ever do,” he insists to himself. He’s always looking up “How to make people remember” him, because he hasn’t achieved his “magazine” dream. He’s nobody. He’s not famous. Yet.

The question writer-director Elijah Bynum (“Hot Summer Nights”) asks in “Magazine Dreams” is “How far will Killian go” to achieve that dream?

As we see him sit in sessions with a court-ordered therapist (Harriet Sansom Harris from “Frasier”), as we hear Killian recite a mantra as he tries to control his temper when confronted — “I control my emotions. My emotions don’t control me.” — as we watch his clumsy-to-the-point-of-pathetic attempts to video his “Fundamentals of Body Building” lecture for Youtube, and sit on the edge of our seat watching the most uncomfortable first date ever (with Haley Bennett), we wonder.

When we hear him read his increasingly desperate, unanswered fan letters to his body building idol (played by Michael O’Hearn) we wonder some more.

Those comments on his posted video aren’t that far from the truth — “incel vibe,” and “Why hasn’t he killed himself yet?” As Killian lashes out against rude, cheating house painters and others, we wonder if it’s “himself” we have to worry about him killing.

Majors is a coiled knot of muscle and barely-contained fury in this performance, playing up the twitchy awkwardness, immersed in the mania of a single-minded pursuit, able to play “calm” to the therapist but not really fooling her, us or himself.

It’s a brilliant turn and worth all the “Oscar contender” hype that was attached to this film when Searchlight had it, preparing to campaign it in 2023 when Majors’s temper and legal problems overwhelmed it.

That gives the film is curious, prurient appeal that won’t make it a hit and probably won’t officially relaunch Yale School of Drama alum Majors’s career. But it’s fascinating to watch an onscreen “Nightcrawler” sort of unraveling like this, even if we wonder how much was “Method,” how much was steroids (Did he? To get “into” the part and the body it required?) and where the real Jonathan Majors ends and the “acting” begins.

Rating: R, graphic violence, drug abuse, nudity, sexual situations, profanity

Cast: Jonathan Majors, Haley Bennett, Taylour Paige, Harriet Sansom Harris and Michael O’Hearn.

Credits: Scripted and directed by Elijah Bynum. A Briarcliffe release.

Running time: 2:04