‘Do you believe in other people… eight billion people just as real as us?’ asks Cory Michael Smith’s vaguely musk-scented social media mogul, Venis. ‘Well obviously not,’ replies his mentor, Randall (Steve Carell). Multi-billionaires Venis and Randall, along with Ramy Youssef’s Jeff, have converged on the mountaintop chalet of Souper (Jason Schwartzman) for a weekend of beer, banter and floor-to-ceiling views of a pristine snowscape. But as they relax, the rest of the world is spiralling into chaos. Venis’ newly launched social media platform has been generating fake news and deepfakes: countries are preparing for war, civil unrest is building and economies are plunged into financial crises. It seems Jesse Armstrong’s latest satire, Mountainhead, is set on convincing us that, if ever we find food in short supply, we should, indeed, eat the rich.

Armstrong has crafted a script so crammed with tech-bro jargon that you’d think he’d swallowed a handbook on how to speak Silicon Valley. And the main cast commit wholeheartedly: Carell is the ‘papa bear’ dispensing out financial advice peppered with philosophical musings; Schwartzman a pathetic suck-up trying to secure investors for his meditation app; Smith an unhinged megalomaniac unable to admit to his catastrophic blunder; and Youssef an up-and-coming youngster with, perhaps, a glimmer of a conscience.

The tensions between the central quartet build to a crescendo and characters concoct increasingly bizarre solutions to their problems. And yet there is little unexpected here. Mountainhead’s relevance to the current political climate is terrifying, but it is also its greatest weakness. It's not prescient, it's predictable. We know far too well what the uber-rich are capable of, the depths of their pockets and the reach of their influence. Even four great performances cannot elevate a film that fails to provide any true revelations.

Mountainhead is available now on Sky Atlantic and NOW.