Waves of sound reverberate around the auditorium while glaring beams of light flash and flicker.

It’s an engulfing, atmospheric opening and the first image of the dancers as they emerge from the darkness, the space seeming to expand around them, is one that will linger in the memory.

Yet from that point onwards there’s little development.

In fact, New York Comic Con (NYCC) and other fan specific spaces also do a tremendous job of inverting many carefully crafted social norms.

The people who attend conventions catering to geeks—like the bustling celebration of video games, graphic novels, and anime that was last month’s New York Comic Con—don’t have the best reputations in the wider culture.

Straight male devotees are generally portrayed as awkward, socially inept, and pervy, a strange hybrid of None of these stereotypes are completely false (e.g.

The plight of this unexceptional individual sucked into an extraordinary struggle for survival brings the audience face to face with an extreme urban nightmare.

This is a city whose constant din drowns out voices and entreaties that are dying to be heard, like those of Shaurya (Rajkummar Rao), a soft-spoken, strait-laced travel agency employee.