The opening music and titles of Are We Not Cats–a slow, dissonant cacophony that sounds like a cross between a Portland-based industrial band and the most obscure vaporwave you’ve ever heard on the internet–sets the stage accurately for what we’re about to see, an eye-averting portrayal of human mental instability in lonely millennials contained in a painfully indie film. But that’s not a bad thing. Amidst a few story stumbles, it’s an adventurous delve into the world of mumblecore filmmaking that explores romance in the midst of mental illness and bodily horror.

Thirty-something Eli (Michael Patrick Nicholson) is not having a great day after losing his home, job, and girlfriend in less than 24 hours. In sheer desperation to hopefully not have to live in his moving truck for the rest of his life, he takes up a job as a delivery guy in a remote upstate backwater. After showing up five hours late to deliver a huge engine, engine-owner Kyle (Michael Godere) takes Eli to an underground, drug-fueled goth-y party. There, he meets Kyle’s girlfriend Anya (Chelsea Lopez), the hippest hipster girl in all of hipsterdom, and becomes smitten with her manic-pixie-dream-girl quirky cuteness. But both Eli and Anya suffer from the same habit: trichotillomania (the compulsion to pull out your own hair) and trichophagia (the compulsion to eat your own hair).

It’s this strange compulsion that ultimately brings the two together. But the grotesqueries are moreso a physical representation of a much deeper issue, which is anxiety and depression that no one else seems to understand. The two are both fascinated and horrified by it, like Jeff Goldblum in The Fly, and see their illness through a comedically absurd lens–just as writer and director Xander Robin does.

The handheld cinematography and disoriented score throughout are also contributing factors to making us feel as barely put together and functioning as the film’s sympathetic characters. The post-9/11 nihilism that has defined the millennial generation is strong with this one; the trope of stoked-and-broke 20 and 30-somethings is something widely seen and heard in all forms of media nowadays, but Are We Not Cats manages to keep it fresh with strong performances and writing, as well as relatable if you happen to have been born any time between 1980 and 1995.

Are We Not Cats is not for everyone. At times it’s a bit “hashtag-edgy” and will probably be too weird for most viewers, especially ones prone to say that infamous phrase “those fucking millennials.” But underneath the absurdity and strange series of events that unfold in the plot, its heart is in the right place. If it does indeed push some people away, it will have done its job as a metaphor for a mentally ill existence, which is what sufferers have to deal with in the real world every day.

ARE WE NOT CATS, hits select theaters February 23^rd via Cleopatra Entertainment.