Over the course of two days, office worker Kris (Amy Seimetz) remortgages her home, empties her bank accounts, and stops showing up for work. We know she has been drugged into a suggestible state by a petty thief, but she does not. She comes to, destitute and jobless, and can do nothing but start again. She connects with Jeff (Shane Carruth), an intense and secretive financial consultant, who has also experienced the way solid things like reputation and capital can melt into air. They begin a precarious life together – “I’m lucky to have this job,” each of them says – but they are haunted by the past.

Extraordinarily, Carruth not only directed the film while acting in every second scene, he also wrote, edited and scored it. But the story is such a gossamer thing, it’s hard to imagine it working any other way. It’s not so much an auteur/weltanschauung issue as an extreme technical challenge. Swirls of brief dialogue and visual clues are anchored by the charisma of the two leads and the mesmeric soundtrack. The result is a genuinely moving sci-fi thriller rather than a speculative mess. The obscure origins of the drug with which Kris was brainwashed – genetically-engineered pigs? Stolen orchids?– hint at bigger concerns about the human drive to tinker with the order of things, and our uncanny knack for exploiting the chaos that ensues. 

Deduct one star, for Jeff ’s bossy wooing style. You say protective, I say controlling. But the couple’s dynamic– cagey, twice-bitten, driven to connect nonetheless – is a story worth telling. It would have worked if the entire scifi apparatus were just a container for that delicate, bruised romance.

Like Blue Jasmine, this is also a film that wants to talk about money, as collective dream and private nightmare, and the limits of responsibility. Unlike Blue Jasmine, it packs a wallop of agriindustrial paranoia and X-Files vintage gore (if you’re squeamish, the immortal line “It won’t come out” will be your cue to look away for five minutes or so). Don’t see ’em both in the same day. But see ’em both.