Matthew Ogens’ creepy, fascinating documentary, Confessions of a Superhero, works incredibly well as an extreme psychological portrait of four misfits rattling around on the lonely, desperate edges of the Hollywood margins. The quartet is essentially a flock of panhandlers who dress as superheroes and pose for photos with tourists in exchange for small donations. It’s a grim, disturbing picture of our obsession with celebrity–difficult to watch but just as tough to look away.

The “stars” of the movie are gangly ex-meth addict Christopher Dennis, who dons a sweat-stained Superman costume and claims to be the hushed-up illegitimate son of the late actress Sandy Dennis; curvy former Tennessee prom queen Jennifer Wenger, who forces her assets into a Wonder Woman costume when she’s not busy making awful life decisions; rage-filled Batman impersonator Maxwell Allen, who has a passing resemblance to George Clooney and puts the “Dark” back into the Dark Knight; and scrawny, depressed Joe McQueen, who transforms himself into the Incredible Hulk with the aid of green, plastic muscles.

They all dream of being celebrities making 20 mil a picture, and in each case they have a stunning level of self-deception. But their delusions, which sustain them, are discomfiting because they remind us of how we are all capable of kidding ourselves, even if on a much smaller scale. Also really captivating are the parallels between these troubled souls and the characters they impersonate. Sad as he is, Dennis really has a noble Clark Kent streak that makes him the unofficial mayor of this glitzy skid row. McQueen, who was homeless for years, dreams of hulking up and avenging that bully known as life. It’s not always easy to tell if these sad-sacks gravitated to a particular guise because they related to the character’s personality traits or if the roles they play gradually begin to shape their behavior. In some cases, the clothes seem to make the man and the Wonder Woman.•