When I heard that a big-budget biopic about a young Donald Trump’s relationship with infamous lawyer Roy Cohn was hitting the movie theaters, I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. ‘What’s the point?”, I thought. Aside from a handful of mythical undecided swing state voters, everyone and their mother has made up their mind about Trump. There is nothing more to be said about him. However, as a dutiful “Succession” fan who will watch any piece of media where Jeremy Strong plays a character with “Roy” in his name, I ignored what I thought was my better judgment and decided to see it anyway.

I walked away from the movie shocked. What I expected to be a cheap exploitation flick that would offer nothing more than bad “SNL”–esque impressions and preachy political messaging was instead far more nuanced and interesting than I could have ever predicted. “The Apprentice” may be best characterized as a biopic by way of a supervillain origin story; a black comedy that slowly morphs into a horror movie. The film makes the intelligent decision not to touch Trump’s political career, instead focusing on his evolution as a young businessman that made him into the Trump we know today. Donald Trump (Sebastian Stan) begins the film as a sort of everyman; a glorified landlord who suffers through awkward dates and desperately seeks validation from elite men. If I could have forgotten he wasn’t, well, Trump, I’d have found him sympathetic. Through Roy Cohn’s (Jeremy Strong) mentoring, the audience watches as Trump goes from a bright-eyed young man to a repugnant monster, eventually surpassing his teacher and leaving him behind. In a way, it’s a “Frankenstein” tale about modern America.

The best part of the film is undoubtedly the acting on display. Jeremy Strong was every bit as incredible as I had been hoping for, and then some. His ability to capture both the brutality and tragedy of Cohn’s character was astounding, and one that I believe ought to net him at least a nomination for best supporting actor. Sebastian Stan’s Trump was equally as impressive, if not more so. It would have been so easy for his Trump to become a tired caricature, but Stan is able to walk that thin line amazingly well. Rather than doing the much-mocked “Trump voice”, he instead focuses on Trump’s physical tics, incorporating more and more over the course of the film. By the end, Stan’s Trump is downright uncanny. Maria Bakalova, who plays Ivana Trump, rounds out the main cast beautifully, adding a necessary touch of humanity to the otherwise morally pitch-black movie.

‘The Apprentice’ also succeeds at being deeply uncomfortable to watch, by design. The dialogue is whip-smart, but half the time a character opens their mouth, they’re going to say something repulsive. The New York depicted in the film is bleak and grimy, often edited with a VHS-style fuzz reminiscent of the 70’s/80’s setting. Sexuality and sexual violence are also used (and perhaps, in the case of one particularly controversial scene, overused) to rather skin-crawling effect. And yet it works, reflecting the corruption not only of the protagonist but of America as a whole.

So, to return to my original question about this film: what could it possibly say that would change anyone’s mind about Trump? And the answer is… nothing. His detractors will only come away hating him more, and his supporters have already dismissed the movie as mere slander. But I don’t think the point of this film was to change the way we view Trump. “The Apprentice” is not a film with radical political ambitions as much as it is a psychodrama about a relationship between two deeply cruel men. Crafting a believable and compelling origin story for one of the most omnipresent men of our time is, simply put, interesting, and more than justifies its existence.

In some ways, “The Apprentice” feels like a film that should have been released maybe twenty years from now, once Trump is (hopefully) long out of the media cycle. It’s unusual to see this kind of psychological exploration involving such a contemporarily relevant public figure, and the studio is already paying the price through litigation from Trump’s legal team and low box office returns from audiences. But even though it was probably doomed from the start to be a commercial dud, it manages to be a strong creative success. And perhaps in twenty years, the Trump-weary American public might be ready to revisit “The Apprentice” and give it the artistic merit it deserves.