I saw Cuckoo at this year’s South By Southwest Festival in downtown Austin’s historic Paramount Theatre, and it was a screening I won’t soon forget. Not because it was my first time at the historic theater, which was beautiful in its ornate and oldschool decoration inside. Rather, it’s because the film–a body horror whose main monster is a shrieking carniverous bird disguised in human form–was so absurdly bizarre and so ear-splittingly loud that it clawed and nested its way deep into my brain and ears.

The film stars Hunter Schafer (HBO’s Euphoria, Yorgos Lanthimos’s upcoming Kinds of Kindness) as Gretchen, a young woman whose remarried father brings her to a remote German Alps resort, much to her resentment. After her dad’s weird boss Mr. König (Dan Stevens) shows interest in her mute half sister, she begins to understand that something is off. The strange noises that she hears at night reveal a darker secret and danger that threatens her.

Cuckoo is a fun time if you’re looking for a mix of unsettling thrills and a playfully silly premise with a campy execution. It’s definitely squarely a midnight movie versus thinking of itself as a serious horror film. I understand that this line is what the film’s eccentric writer and director, Tilman Singer, enjoys treading. During the film’s post-screening Q&A in which the cast and director attended, Dan Stevens said that he saw Singer’s 2018 horror film Luz and immediately agreed to be in this film without question. He did however, appear to be just as flummoxed as the audience was after watching this deranged, off-center horror movie.

Leading the film is Hunter Schafer, who commands the film with strength and toughness, bloody and battered combatting the bird by the film’s end. Cuckoo will best be enjoyed by those looking for a midnight movie. I know that when I think of Cuckoo, I’ll hear every shrill, piercing squawk that rang in my ears every time the cawing creature preyed upon another unsuspecting victim. I’m still trying to wonder if the effect that I felt from the film was from true fear, or if it was just the shrill volume that the sound design operated at. I won’t overthink it, as it would drive me to the point of the film’s title if I did for too long.

‘Cuckoo’ is in theaters August 2nd.