Ireon Roach as Charlotte Kurtich in Knives and Skin (Tribeca Film Festival)

Whether or not you like Jennifer Reeder’s film Knives and Skin might be relative to how many of your buttons it pushes. Set in a small Midwestern town after the disappearance of a teenage girl and filmed with a hyper-stylized color palate, the film appears, on its surface, as though it caters to the fans of Twin Peaks, as it features behavior that verges on the ludicrous. However, Reeder’s film is very much its own animal, and even though its flaws may ultimately leave some viewers frustrated, I was much more inclined to dwell on its strengths.

Sixteen-year-old Carolyn Harper (Raven Whitley) is left stranded by the quarry by Andy (Ty Olwin), a football player who loses interest in her when he realizes they aren’t going to hook up on his terms, and Carolyn disappears, causing panic and a community-wide search. The rest of the film focuses on the townsfolk as they process the trauma of this event, many of them in increasingly bizarre ways. An investigation from an amusingly incompetent sheriff and the impending homecoming dance form loose threads of plot.

Most of the characters are sharply defined and resoundingly quirky. Joanna (Grace Smith), a teenager who used to be friends with Carolyn, sells her infirm mother’s underwear to her high school principle, tentatively flirts with her substitute English teacher, and dreams of escaping to Sarah Lawrence. Two other teens, Laurel (Kayla Carter) and Colleen (Emma Ladji), unexpectedly find love. Lisa (Marika Engelhardt), the missing girl’s mother and the high school choir teacher, wears her daughter’s clothes, sobs convulsively, and kisses Andy as a means of finding her daughter. In almost every scene, someone is saying or doing something bizarre. The director has an eye for deadpan, awkward dialogue, which frequently verges into the surreal. Gradually, certain themes emerge—for instance, children who are more capable of facing the world than the increasingly infirm adults.

Surrealism is clearly the goal, and Reeder achieves it through the behavior of her characters and the heightened and often humorous choices in her filmmaking. The lighting and color is so stylized that it raises the film to more of a mythic plane, and the editing is languorous and at times hypnotizing. Reeder’s background is in the art world, and Knives and Skin seems to have been made by an artist who trusts the quality of the image to lead to the narrative rather than vice versa. Characters also break out into song, and occasionally we see Carolyn Harper’s body, in an odd state of semi-consciousness rolling through the grass and speaking in a way that makes us unsure if she is actually alive or has been turned into something else.

Sometimes Reeder leans too deeply into idiosyncrasies, and they feel forced. Furthermore, the script at times feels slack—there is practically no sense of urgency to any of the action, and though the pace is intentionally slow, it is still likely to lose the attention of many. That being said, it is surprising how much of the film works, and its humor and unexpected poignancy are what linger after viewing.

Furthermore, the cast pulls heavily from Chicago’s theater scene, where Reeder herself lives. Chicago has long been a haven for theater people who want nothing to do with New York or LA. Who’s to say the Windy City couldn’t do the same for film?