Writer and Director: Jamie Sykes
The term “incel”, shortened from “involuntary celibate”, has been around since the 1990s but has burgeoned in recent years. Young men who have found it difficult or impossible to form romantic relationships are increasingly radicalised online into a culture that blames all sorts of external factors, especially women and feminism, for their plight.
There is an inherent absurdity in the incel movement, which writer/director Jamie Sykes uses as his way in. The radicalised men develop such extreme, hate-fuelled language and aggressive postures that they actively drive away anyone and everyone, further fuelling their sense of isolation. In the case of The Last Incel, that is shown with a group of four young men whose regular Zoom calls (represented by the use of handheld metal frames) encouraging each other’s incel beliefs are threatened when one of them, Fiachra Corkery’s Jack, drunkenly sleeps with a woman at his brother’s stag do.
What should be a cause for celebration is instead further provocation for the group’s self-appointed leader, Jackson Ryan’s Percy. And things aren’t helped when the woman he met, Justine Stafford’s Margaret, gatecrashes the Zoom call and starts challenging their assumptions. The provocation brings out the worst in Percy. Expletives and the most offensive slur words come pouring out as the cornered incel throws out attacks on all sides. And yet Jack, facing expulsion from the group because technically he is no longer celibate (involuntarily or otherwise), wants to stay in the group because they are his only friends.
For such a dark and disturbing topic, The Last Incel also manages to be very, very funny. Sykes’s writing is perfectly on point, contrasting the radicalised invective with the inherent sweetness at the heart of the group’s members, with Corkery and Ryan joined by Jimmy Kavanagh and GoblinsGoblinsGoblins. The quintet of performers frequently breaks out into dance pieces, choreographed to several pop standards in ways that heighten and inform the group’s dynamic.
Most of all, Sykes manages to turn an act of laughing at the individuals within the incel group to feeling for them. Even Percy, in his continued rejection and further descent into extremism, elicits sympathy by the end. That’s a difficult line to tread, especially when some incels in the real world have resorted to acts of mass violence, but it is effective here. And while some of the counterarguments Stafford brings to the table skirt with sledgehammer-like lack of subtlety, the show always pulls back before proselytising too much.
In the real world, we probably can’t neutralise the incel movement with an hour of jokes and dance. But The Last Incel does encourage us to think of those that the movement has in its grip as vulnerable people, capable of being shown that the hatred during into their hearts is not the only choice. That it does so while also providing a top-class hour of entertainment and silliness is a blessing. The question is, how do we get the incels to listen?
Continues until 31 May 2025
