Feature movie review: KINDS OF KINDNESS 

• Searchlight Pictures

It's not that there aren't plenty of films being released all the time that are adventurous, challenging or just plain odd. But they tend to be small, niche and aimed at arthouse audiences. Beyond the outrageous, brutal daring of Kinds of Kindness itself is the rather shocking fact that it's being pitched to multiplex audiences as a summer event film. That surprise announcement earlier this year was clearly intended to ride the coattails of the success of Poor Things, last year's collaboration between writer-director Yorgos Lanthimos and stars Willem Dafoe and Emma Stone—and, particularly, Stone's Oscar win for Best Actress.

And here's Kinds of Kindness getting a wide release? Just in time for a major holiday weekend traditionally big for moviegoing? Honestly, I didn't think an industry leaning so hard on comic-book and kiddie-animation fantasies had this kind of risk-taking in them nowadays.

It's going to be very interesting to see how this gambit plays out. Are mainstream audiences ready again for a movie that isn't only unambiguously adult—in all senses of the word; hello, polyamorous partner-swapping sex scene!—but also this bleak? Because Poor Things—for all its bonkers, explicit, weird Frankengirl feminist fancy—was practically a Disney fairy tale next to this mad monstrosity of a movie. Poor Things was, in many ways, a kind film. The title of this one deploys the word "kind" in ways that are nothing but supremely ironic, and stretch the meaning of the word almost out of all recognition. It's part of Lanthimos' typical grotesque humor, on display here like never before—which, given his filmography, is saying something.

Three separate short stories come together here in ways that are loosely connected thematically (matters of control and coercion, twisted devotion and desperation for love and connection weave through them) and tonally (all three tales are surreal, nihilist and profoundly misanthropic). Yay for a movie that actually attempts to capture how wretchedly so many of us are scrambling for meaning, identity and belonging, no matter in what hellhole we might find it.

All three stories are, paradoxically, both not really about plot, yet also tightly reliant on unsettling you with what happens next. Even the most veteran movie lover or most experienced devourer of any kind of storytelling will be hard-pressed to guess what bizarre link will be added next to these separate chains of events. Which isn't to suggest that these are stories that rely on "twists," either. The peculiar genius of Lanthimos in this case (he cowrote the script with his frequent collaborator Efthimis Filippou) is that the course of each story is perfectly reasonable and logical taken on its own terms. It's just that those terms are so wildly, wonderfully absurdist, eerily esoteric and profoundly perverse that they tickle with their delicious unpredictability.

It is so rare for a movie to surprise someone like me, who sees a ridiculous number of films each year, yet sitting in the dark with Kinds of Kindness was just nonstop novelty, in the best way. We can call this an "original" film, but that almost demands a redefinition of the word to encompass the downright feral inventiveness at work here.

The three stories are presented anthology-style, one short film after another, not as three entwined tales. Which means—more deliciousness—that we get to savor a brilliant cast in different roles in each story, each character so distinct from the other ones they portray that it becomes an embarrassment of creative riches. These artistic badasses, clearly having a ball, are: Stone, Dafoe, Jesse Plemons, Hong Chau, Margaret Qualley, Joe Alwyn and Mamoudou Athie. The stories they slot into are about—loosely, and to varying degrees metaphorically—the oppression of corporate employment, the mysteries of marriage and the grip of cultish belief. So, again: lots of 2020s angst and anxiety to play with.

Tangentially intriguing is how Kinds of Kindness also plays with some of the things that have kept many moviegoers who are hungry for sophisticated substance out of cinemas: the pleasure of bingeing quality visual storytelling at home. Because in some ways, with its serial stories, this feels very much like that. Will all the recent industry handwringing about how to get butts back in multiplex seats be solved by a movie that feels, in some ways, like prestige TV?