What can I tell you about "Ultrasound"? Not a lot, really — and I just finished watching it. The movie is proudly incomprehensible — a strategy that's sometimes employed to make viewers think that what they're watching is art. That's a remote possibility in this case — although there are times, especially in the first half of the film, when its woozy, slugged sensibility makes it feel like an art movie, as we're shown impossible things happening without being much remarked upon by the characters. The picture achieves a creepiness early on that it doesn't earn at the end, and as it grinds along, our hopes for some sort of clever course correction are crowded out by feelings of simple annoyance.

The time-shredding story, which is basically insane, is drawn from a couple of comics in the "Generous Bosom" series by Conor Stechschulte, which first-time feature director Rob Schroeder has attempted to come to grips with. I don't think he's succeeded, but that could be because I haven't read the comics; or maybe the problem is that Stechschulte also wrote the script. In any case, this is the deal, as far as I can figure it:

On a stormy night in some unspecified place, a man named Glen (Vincent Kartheiser) is driving along a backcountry road when he runs over what we see in a close-up to be a board that's had nails pounded through it — a hazard that's almost surely been purposely placed. With his tires trashed, Glen makes his way to a nearby house, where he's greeted by a cheery gentleman named Art (Bob Stephenson), who invites him in and introduces him to his young wife, Cyndi (Chelsea Lopez). Art brings out a bottle and after a few drinks tells Glen he should sleep over — not on a couch, but in the master bedroom, with Cyndi. Glen is weirded out by this suggestion, but what're you gonna do?

The story now jumps ahead an unstated amount of time — although not too much, apparently, since Glen is still in the area and staying at a local motel. Whatever, Art turns up at this motel and tells Glen that Cyndi is pregnant. Chewing this over, Glen goes to check his phone and finds a message on it from Cyndi, telling him to get rid of Art and text her his motel address: "I'll explain when I get there."

OK, so far, so complicated. But there's much, much more wacky stuff to come. We see Cyndi saying, "I'm sorry about all this, Glen," and then we cut to a redhead named Shannon (Breeda Wool), who's reading from some sort of script and also saying, "I'm sorry about all this, Glen." We meet a doctor named Conners (Tunde Adebimpe), who runs a big research laboratory (out here in the boonies) that used to be devoted to the making of cheese. Blue cheese, to be specific. Shannon works here — she's a psychologist of some sort — and among the experimental subjects she tends to is Glen, who at one point suddenly becomes confined to a wheelchair. We also observe a woman named Katie (Rainey Qualley, sister of Margaret), who's been tucked away in a house by her boyfriend, a married senator named Alex (Chris Gartin), and is sometimes pregnant herself, on and off. At one point we see Alex cutting up wood with a band saw, but there's just no room to stuff an explanation for this into the bursting narrative, so that's the last we see of it.

I'll leave out the two wiretappers who briefly drift into the story (they're part of something called "Field Unit 2"), and the sinister electronic tone with which some of the characters are much concerned, and Art's longtime side hustle as a party magician, and the unshaped chaos into which the movie wanders toward the end. I think we can assume that the picture was hobbled by a very low budget (the lab interiors, with their blank walls and concrete floors, look like they were filmed in a building that's still under construction). But this air of impoverishment also enhances the picture's eeriness, at first, much in the way that the bare-bones production values of movies like "Night of the Living Dead" and "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer" enhanced their aura of dead-end dread. If only "Ultrasound" had more to enhance.

A scene from ULTRASOUND, a Magnet release. Photo courtesy of Magnet Releasing.

Chelsea Lopez in ULTRASOUND, a Magnet release. Photo courtesy of Magnet Releasing.

Kurt Loder is the film critic for Reason Online. To find out more about Kurt Loder and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

 Chelsea Lopez in ULTRASOUND, a Magnet release. Photo courtesy of Magnet Releasing.