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In the early months of the calendar year, high-quality film releases are the last thing any experienced theater-goer would expect. With the Oscar season wrapped up, audiences are left to feed on the scraps of projects abandoned by their studios. Conventional wisdom says that spending over ten dollars on a ticket for a product that nobody really wants to sell is not the shrewdest move, but there are certainly some exceptions. One of these exceptions should be writer-director Steven Knight’s new film “Serenity,” starring Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway. It is a film so astoundingly misguided that it deserves the same amount of critical analysis reserved for classic works of art. It is a film that will be discussed for decades, raising questions like how a script like this could be approved, attached to various superstar actors, filmed, edited, and released with the intention of being shown to actual human beings.

So, why should you see it? In order to understand this movie, you should ask yourself what is more worthy of your time: a serviceable yet predictable Oscar-bait biopic your parents told you to see, or a ludicrously overstuffed thriller that leaves you floored at every turn and laughing hysterically at the most inappropriate times?

The basic premise is hokey yet simple enough. McConaughey plays a lonely fisherman named Baker Dill, a resident of the fictional Plymouth Island, where he spends his days drinking heavily, spouting cryptic dialogue and devising a master plan to capture a prize tuna named Justice. McConaughey’s performance is essentially an extended riff on his persona for Lincoln car commercials, which is just an extended riff on the same serious roles he has been playing ever since the onset of the “McConaissance.” Every day he goes out on his boat (called Serenity!) and every day he comes back empty handed. Eventually he fires his assistant Duke (Djimon Honsou), yelling at him, “You’ve been bad luck, ever since your WIFE DIED!” as soaring strings punctuate the background.

Things get fishier when Karen (Hathaway), Baker’s ex-wife, shows up and turns the story of man vs. nature into a Raymond Chandler novel. She tracked him down all the way in Plymouth Island, even with his new pseudonym that he created (for reasons I cannot even begin to fathom). She needs him to murder her new husband, Frank (Jason Clarke, chewing the scenery like candy), because he beats her every night and terrorizes her son, Patrick, who is also Baker’s. If that didn’t make Frank evil enough, the fact that he walks around saying things like “Where can I find some ten-year-old ass?” should be the nail in the coffin. She is offering Baker $10 million to take Frank out on the Serenity and kill him, a heck of a dilemma for our cash-strapped hero who can’t catch a tuna for his life. But wait, there’s more, because Karen casually alludes to the fact that Baker also has the ability to telepathically communicate with Patrick, although this doesn’t seem to be a primary concern for anyone involved. Oh yeah, and also, there is a mysterious salesman (Jeremy Strong) who has been following Baker all over the island, desperate to get his attention.

Is it a crime thriller? An ode to the sea? A sci-fi epic? Why not all of those things in their weirdest incarnation possible! The devil is in the details: random switches to computer-generated imagery, Hathaway’s character calling her abusive husband “Daddy” every five seconds, and shots of fish being brutally carved up every time anyone is talking about murder. We are also treated to McConaughey stripping down to his bare bottom on half a dozen occasions, but not always for the ultra-cringy sex scenes. During one moment, he announces he’s “going for a swim,” sprints naked out the door of his trailer-park home, and jumps off of a large cliff on the edge of the sea. The way this scene is shot and edited defies description; it was the moment I realized I was seeing something that transcended the “bad movie” label, to something much more memorable and mesmerizing.

Yet Steven Knight has more tricks up his sleeve. Halfway through the film, a plot twist arrives, one so captivatingly strange that even somebody somehow dozing off would be awakened with a thud. It is simultaneously the best and the worst twist in film history. Frankly, there should never be another twist ever again, as any other will pale in ambition or shock value. It should also warn screenwriters not to rely on cheesy gimmicks, and to just tell a compelling story. It has something to do with the father-son telepathy, the CGI effects, and the fact that this salesman following Baker around is revealed to be named “The Rules.” What does this all mean? That’s what Baker tries to find out, as he spends the second half of the film in a paranoid frenzy. “They say in Plymouth Island that everybody knows everything,” The Rules says to him, to which he drunkenly replies, “Or maybe…nobody knows nothin’.”

But what does Steven Knight know? It is really hard to tell whether or not he is in on the joke. The man is not Tommy Wiseau; he is an established figure who has released critically acclaimed films in the past, and even co-created the British “Who Wants to be a Millionaire.” Instead of the amateurism of “The Room,” Knight is given a bunch of A-listers on both sides of the camera to make this filth as eye-catching as possible. The slick presentation of “Serenity” only adds more surrealism to the experience. Yet the droll box office numbers probably mean that Knight will not be afforded another opportunity like this. All the more reason then, to knowingly spend ten bucks of your hard earned money on a train wreck. As film studios get more and more content telling the same stories audiences have been seeing for decades, an ambitious, deranged flick like “Serenity” is quickly becoming a dying breed. Check “Serenity” out for yourself and you will understand exactly why this is the case.

Will Jacobson can be reached at wjacobson@wesleyan.edu.