How would you react if you knew an asteroid was hurtling towards Earth, and you only had exactly six months and fourteen days to live? How do you think the world would react? Well, this is the exact question that director Adam McKay ponders in his latest Netflix film, Don’t Look Up.

In this nail-biting satire, two astronomers, Randall Mindy (Leonardo Dicaprio) and Kate Dibiasky (Jennifer Lawrence) casually discover an asteroid that is on a collision course with Earth, and they set off to warn the world about their discovery. Rather than panic and mobilization to stop the impact, they are met with a society indifferent to their warnings. In an increasingly panicked plot, we see the spiral of these two astronomers and the reaction of the world around them.

There is nothing subtle about McKay’s intentions, he is holding a mirror up in the face of society, forcing it to take a hard look at itself. This film is fraught with metaphors, the most obvious: the asteroid signifying the impending doom of climate change. The reactions of the media and the populace mirror the real-life reactions to climate change. This film is meant to be a wake-up call, the question is, did the message stick?

McKay even includes the absurdity of greed. Once the United States discovers the asteroid is chock full of precious metals totaling trillions of dollars, a character who is clearly the love child of Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Jeff Bezos comes into play. He holds superiority over the President of the United States, and they decide they’re going to “capture” the asteroid to mine its resources. The genius of this film is the insanity of this ploy and the fact that something like this is entirely believable. The message? Billionaires hold priority over the whole of the world.

McKay doesn’t stop there; he also sheds light on an important societal issue when it comes to how society treats women. Kate Dibiasky, played beautifully by Jennifer Lawrence, is the one who initially discovered the asteroid. When she and her colleague, Randall Mindy appear on national television to warn the world of their impending doom, they are laughed at by the hosts and not taken seriously in the least bit. Dibiasky loses her cool, screaming into the camera, “You should stay up all night every night crying when we’re all, 100 percent, for sure, going to f–king die!” Immediately, she is dismissed as hysterical, and her passion is scoffed at. Her character, and especially at this moment, echoes Greta Thunberg, and the reaction to her is much the same as it was to the young climate activist.

McKay is able to take such a seriously dreadful topic and deliver it in such a clever way it is difficult to take your eyes off the screen. The largest message of all that McKay drives home is how digitally distracted we all are. There are serious issues in this world, things that are difficult to face. Instead of facing them, the majority of us all keep our heads down in the comforting perfect world that social media provides for us. McKay is begging us to look up from our endless feeds at the world around us. Perhaps this film will be enough for you to think deeper about what is going on out here.

Cortni Taylor is a sophomore at the University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma.