Though an excruciating movie to watch, even by cringe comedy standards, Friendship is a popular indie film that’s gone into wide release.

The feature debut of writer-director Andrew DeYoung, who’s mainly worked in television (Our Flag Means Death, Pen15), Friendship is surprisingly well-done, sustaining a limited conceit long enough to make you consider the oddities of friendship between men in particular, and the increasingly common phenomenon of the isolated male. Recent studies have made much of the paucity of adult male friendships, with 15 percent of men in the United States and an astounding 28 percent of men in the UK reporting the lack of even one close friend.

The dark laughs generated by Friendship all strike the same nerve of social embarrassment, intensifying rapidly to a point of mortification that continues through the film’s ninety-seven minutes. It features Tim Robinson of the Netflix sketch comedy show I Think You Should Leave playing Craig Waterman, a perpetually awkward and self-involved manchild who’s achieved an amazing level of upper-middle-class success. Like Homer Simpson as seen through the eyes of Frank Grimes in the immortal Simpsons episode “Homer’s Enemy,” Craig can only amaze us by having somehow managed to become a marketing executive who’s acquired a beautiful wife Tami (Kate Mara) and son Stephen (Jack Dylan Grazer) and a nice house in the suburbs.

Though how long he can keep them is another question. Tami is introduced in the first scene in a group therapy session for people recovering from cancer. As she worries poignantly about a recurrence of the disease, Craig leans in to intone in a strange mock-humorous voice, “It’s not coming baaaaaaaack.”

This is presumably his attempt to act as a consoling husband, but Craig’s version of expected behaviors is always way off. His entire wardrobe is oversized and in shades of tan, yet he boasts about the great clothes he buys exclusively from a company called Ocean View Dining. (“They do food, too.”)

He spends most of the movie facing people who are staring at him, silently appalled at what they see. His level of success at work can be attributed to the reliable creepiness of the corporate world — his team’s job is to make computer apps more addictive. Presumably he was able to appeal to Tami because her dysfunctional family life in childhood made her vulnerable — she reveals that her own father was a narcissist whom her suffering mother never did divorce. And as for his son, Stephen, he adores his mother to an intense mouth-kissing degree, while he’s at best polite to Craig.

For all his success, Craig is so isolated, in fact, that he brags about having achieved an enclosed office where the big perk for him is he can eat his lunch alone. He sometimes stares out his office window, practically steaming up the glass with his breath, as he watches several male cronies at his company take their smoke breaks together, laughing and talking with an ease he can’t achieve.

In short, Craig desperately needs a friend. And one day the miracle happens, when he takes a wrongly delivered package over to the new neighbors and the door opens to reveal Austin Carmichael (a perfectly cast Paul Rudd). A glamor bro with an impressively tousled head of hair and big mustache, Austin is a local TV weatherman who plays in a band and likes to go “adventuring.” He also collects cool ancient weaponry, and when he passes Craig a crude spearhead, we get a shot of his hand irradiated by light against a midnight sky full of stars — such is Craig’s transcendent joy.

Craig is infatuated at once, and soon the instant pals are breaking into the sewer system and navigating its labyrinthian tunnels together, going mushroom-hunting, and gathering for a guys-night beer-bust.

And it’s then, when Craig is surrounded by Austin’s other male friends, that his weirdness, which had only made Austin laugh fondly, is suddenly revealed as just too weird for ordinary consumption. It happens while sparring in an impromptu boxing session, wearing headgear and gloves. Austin punches Craig in the face two separate times, which is still within the lines of acceptable behavior even after Craig asks him not to do it. But when Craig sucker-punches Austin before he’s ready, that’s over the line, and Craig only seals his fate when he puts soap in his mouth and acts out a bizarre lugubrious apology, moaning, “I’m sowwy! I’m such a bad boy!”

Austin breaks up with Craig. And Craig, having been lured in by too much “free self-expression,” is devastated and can’t get past it. Obsessed with either winning Austin back or somehow getting revenge, Craig’s mania spreads to the point that his entire surprisingly fortunate life unravels around him.

But so strict are the “rules” of male friendship, it’s established that Austin is also maintaining a front, keeping his group of male friends from knowing about his main vulnerability. In fact, the besotted Craig takes extreme measures to protect Austin’s secret too. But whereas Austin can “pass” indefinitely as a societal ideal of the “guy,” and maintain his male friendships on that basis, Craig can never pass for long.

The film ends on a surprisingly disturbing image, which is just a close-up of Craig’s smile, a ghastly, abject smile in spite of all that’s happened, because he sees Austin wink at him.

At that point you’re unhappily taken beyond the narrower topic of male friendship to consider the overwhelming loneliness of the whole human race. Even as we continuously refine the technology that guarantees it’ll be ever easier to stay in contact with each other, somehow the experience of isolation rises. Maybe it’s because the perception of human need repels so many people that faking a “play it cool” vibe — while in a state of aching misery — can be the best way to attract companionship.

It makes sense. If you’re dealing with your own crushing loneliness and anxiety, why take on more from someone else? As Groucho Marx once said, “I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member.”