In VILLAINS, Jules (Maika Monroe) and Mickey (Bill Skarsgård) are two amateur criminals who can’t catch a break. So unskilled they are at what they do, they appear to operate with (albeit misplaced) good intentions. After robbing a gas station and then, unsurprisingly, running out of gas during the getaway, they seek refuge and resources by breaking into a McMansion. Once inside, Jules and Mickey find horrors of a suburban kind. At once a thriller and a black comedy, VILLAINS follows both genres’ formulas close enough to get the job done.

The home’s owners, George (Jeffrey Donovan) and Gloria (Kyra Sedgwick), have a compelling mid-century aesthetic and sensibility, but the sadistic penchants and perversities of most movie monsters. Seasoned in ways our protagonists are not, George and Gloria terrorize Jules and Mickey. Although the subversive relationship of George and Gloria hardly comes across as a novel concept (it’s almost as if someone attempted to blend BRIDE OF CHUCKY with NATURAL BORN KILLERS in the kitchen of THE LOVE WITCH), I can’t say I expected to watch Kyra Sedgwick perform a burlesque striptease. Without question, Sedgwick’s seductions are among the most shocking parts of the film—not because they’re not particularly abject, but because they die down just as fast as they ramp up. VILLAINS wants to be sensational and, yet, if one scratches at the surface of the many moments in which it actively tries to be transgressive, there’s nothing innovative about the story it tells.

VILLAINS is a well-built film in the sense that it persuasively presents a unique aesthetic disposition. Each set is richly decorated, smoothly cohering to the film’s flawless cinematography. Despite the high style, careful composure, and attention to detail that went into constructing the world inside VILLAINS, once you move past how gorgeous it looks, it can feel as vacuous as Sedgwick’s eyes during her big song and dance number. It would seem that the film misses some of its marks because the devil was not really in the details—he was probably lurking around during script edits and table reads ahead of filming. While Monroe and Skarsgård give solid performances, their characters bramble their way through the film, never quite happening upon the chemistry that would give VILLAINS the kind of charm it requires to be a satisfactory black comedy. Likewise, the pairing of Donovan and Sedgwick suffers with much the same problem. All four of these performers have gripping standalone moments in VILLAINS, but they don’t grip onto each other in ensemble scenes that require the right amount of zing to get a good laugh.

No one will regret catching VILLAINS in theaters—I certainly don’t. It’s a nice soft-pitch for Kyra Sedgwick stans and moviegoers who can’t handle big scares. And, even though it has moments of satisfying gore, its thrills become increasingly muted across the course of the film to the point that it goes down quickly and easily. VILLAINS hits most of the notes even if it skips a beat or two.