Like a lamb stridently making its own way to the slaughter, the goofy Netflix thriller In the Shadow of the Moon is a curio begging to be torn apart. It’s a film so odd and unwieldy that it’s impossible to finish watching without exhibiting some sort of extreme, visceral reaction. We would understand annoyance, befuddlement, shock or incredulity and we imagine director Jim Mickle would empathise but as we scratched our head, we also found ourselves oddly charmed by its brazen nuttiness, a film aiming for the stars and, sometimes, almost succeeding. We say almost because there’s a great deal here that doesn’t work – an inevitable pitfall when trying to do so very much. The first scene is set in 2024, a brief tease of a future rife with anarchy, smashed office windows looking down on to a street filled with fiery chaos. We’re then hauled back to 1988 for the investigation of a bizarre string of hard-to-explain deaths, each victim suddenly bleeding out during their workdays with no perpetrator to be seen. With ambitions to become a detective, Officer Thomas Lockhart (Boyd Holbrook) inserts himself into the investigation, soon launched on the trail of a young female killer who evades capture with ease. To say much more would, in our mind, be a spoiler.

There are good intentions behind the film. It feels like an actual movie with a distinct style and a number of diverting action sequences, choreographed with care. Its ambitions are easy to criticise but hard not to admire, a mad little movie with big ideas on its mind.

It’s a yes from us.