Poor Things is one of the stranger movies I’ve seen this year. It’s weird in that way only Yorgos Lanthimos can be weird… chucking aside any sense of box office and decorum or expectations and just doing whatever is rattling around in his brain. I went into it only knowing it was his flick and Emma Stone was in it plus a lot of nudity. Everything else was a surprise.

What even is Poor Things? Well, it’s set in a kind of incidental steampunk late 19th century where a Mad Scientist invites a doctor into his house to record the goings on of a young woman with some kind of brain damage. Why she is that way is kind of horrific and if the many scars on the scientist suggest anything, it’s that we’ve walked into a variant on a Frankenstein story.

Where the movie goes from there is anything but predictable. Whatever in hell Emma Stone is doing is equally unpredictable. The movie’s off-kilter sense of humor is even more unpredictable as is the cultural sense and sensibilities of the film as a whole.

Stone’s character evolves into a favorite of mine… a woman of pure intellect who is equally and unapologetically libidinous. This is one of the most sex positive films out there while also delivering a healthy dose of female autonomy.

Which leads to an ick factor in the film. Some people will bounce hard off the flick for some disturbing implications and the general amount of sex. There’s a certain freedom and maturity to what the film is doing… assuming you can divorce how exploitative Hollywood can be on a metatextual level. In other words, I hope Emma Stone was happy to do this job for Yorgos and wasn’t, for example, under contractual obligation.

I’d like to say a lot more but this is the kind of movie where the more you talk, the more you spoil. And this film is full of gonzo bizarro goodies to spoil. It’s not the most entrancing movie but it is fascinating and too unpredictable to be boring. Whether it’s to your taste is the great unknown. I enjoyed it.

Score: 86