Civil War is the stuff of nightmares in the new film of the same name. American carnage has come to pass in Manhattan, Pittsburgh and beyond. It also looks naggingly sexy. In a slick slab of provocation from writer-director Alex Garland, with Kirsten Dunst as a veteran war photographer, social collapse makes for a pumping blockbuster. Technically, the movie is a wowzer: Apocalypse Now gone TikTok. As always with backers A24, the marketing is beautiful.

Going into Alex Garland’s astonishing new film, “Civil War,” I expected to be irritated by the implausibility of its premise. I’m not talking about the idea that America could devolve into vicious internecine armed conflict. That seems possible, if not probable. In one 2022 poll, 43 percent of Americans said they thought a civil war within the next decade was at least somewhat likely. I wouldn’t go that far, but I won’t be surprised if political violence spikes after the upcoming election and eventually spirals out of control.

That old political reprimand “Have you no decency?” has lost its force. Politicians and media folk show no compunction about lying and tyrannizing, which is how we get Alex Garland’s shameless new movie Civil War. You can’t trust Garland, one of the least of the demi-Kubricks. His topical subjects are less outré than Yorgos Lanthimos’s; plus, he’s less of a craftsman than David Fincher, Christopher Nolan, or Jonathan Glazer. Yet, in Civil War, Garland tries for visionary virtuosity, faking rawness and sensationalism, all to predict America’s collapse.