Bella Baxter is a young woman brought back from the dead by the brilliant and unorthodox scientist Dr. Godwin Baxter. Under Baxter’s protection, Bella is eager to learn. Hungry for the worldliness she is lacking, Bella runs off with Duncan Wedderburn, a slick and debauched lawyer, on a whirlwind adventure across the continents.

Trigger warnings are a no-brainer with Yorgos Lanthimos, as his films are often filled with sadistic, violent, and hypersexualized power games where nobody is quite a pleasant person. These tropes as well as Lanthimos’ trademark cringe humor are just the baseline to describing Poor Things, a sickening yet grandiose movie that transcends categorization. It’s hysterical but not quite a comedy; it’s poetic but not quite a drama. Emma Stone gives a performance so demanding and so audacious yet it never breaks the illusion of being acting. You completely buy her character in the context of the story and are taken aback by her character’s abnormal physicality and wonder with being alive. Mark Ruffalo is also throwing himself into this role that could’ve easily fallen into unbelievability, but he perfectly balances an exaggerated, almost theatrical edge to his role with a vile, pitiful nature to it. Willem Dafoe plays a scientist under heaps of makeup whose motives may provide an emotional anchor to Stone’s character but also unpeels itself to be uncomfortably pathetic due to his background, and Ramy Youssef also does a great job here.

Poor Things may owe some of its inspiration to classic monster movies, but really isn’t like anything audiences have seen before. The production design creates an eye-popping, fantastical version of the Victorian Era and a world with a completely fresh aesthetic, as well as dynamic cinematography with color, B&W, and even a few fish-eye lens shots to invoke Bella’s warped worldview. Bella’s curiosity is devoid of prejudice and preconceived notions on the world’s structures, and she finds herself appalled by those around her trying to control her, and fascinated by anything she gets to choose to do. The humor is ridiculously honest and ballsy, and therefore, not for everyone — not to mention the exaggeratedly comic sex scenes and the uncompromising and even disgusting violence. Its audacity will certainly find its pleasurers, especially those who already love the director’s filmography. This bold tour de force isn’t for the faint of heart and may leave you at a loss for words. The writing and execution are exhilarating in the best way; the more disturbing and out-of-this world it gets, the less you’ll feel you want to look away. You’ll simply want to witness the bizarre yet fascinating unfold in front of you when it’s through Yorgos’ eye and so irresistibly played by Stone as this woman with the literal brain of an infant in her head, eager to experience being alive for all its peculiarities..