So, wow, this is a bad movie.

We start with John Lithgow as a nerdy psychologist dad, who is hanging out at the playground with his kid, and gives a (female) friend and her kid a ride back. They talk about Lithgow’s family’s upcoming trip to Norway, and he mentions that his dad is running some child psych experiments and hey they need a control group, could they borrow this lady’s kid? She laughs and is like “lol no and nobody’s going to let you do this ever” at which point he chloroforms her to abduct the kid.

This is a terrible plan for immediately obvious reasons (when she wakes up, obviously the first thing she does is report this), but what happens next is even dumber: A “bad-ass” version of Lithgow, in black leather and with a real smarmy attitude, sidles up to the car, and is like “hey, brother, you know you have to kill her… don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.”

And so we are clearly supposed to think this is a real person, but… it’s just so obviously not a real character, it’s ridiculous and unthinkable to picture Lithgow as a bad-ass, and obviously it’s his imaginary friend and he’s the one doing the killing. Which in fact turns out to be the case.

The whole movie plays with unreliable narrator stuff, including a deeply confusing scene where his wife is having sex with another guy in public in a park… and then she wakes up, it was all a dream! But no, it wasn’t, we continue on with the scene and it eventually becomes clear that it really happened and it was a mislead that it was a dream… except then that scene ends with someone waking up and it was all a dream… except that, I guess, only part of it was? And not clear exactly which part?

Between the imaginary characters, the multi-level nested dream sequences, and the fact that the actual plot is wildly and ridiculously over-the-top full of absurdities that make no sense (including an absurd-movie version of multiple personalities), telling what’s real and what’s imaginary soon starts to feel like a fool’s errand. It doesn’t even matter, it’s all stupid.

About the only reason I can recommend this movie at all is if you like seeing a complete trainwreck in motion. It shares no real plot or style elements with this, but just on a pure vibes level, the movie it reminds me of most is Ice Cream Man (the Clint Howard slasher). You have been warned.