Housesitters is a film where you either get it or you don’t. Writer/director Jason Coffman gets it, I get it, the whole cast and crew got it and were obviously in on a we-know-this-is-a-low-budget-film gag. Sometimes the humor is SO out there that a normal scene includes a monster named Little Bastard possessing a guy and then lamenting over wanting Korean barbecue.

Angie (Annie Watkins) and Izzy (Jamie Jirak) are two chronic underachievers who manage to land a housesitting job, which they take advantage of to smoke pot, watch porn, and hook up. Unbeknownst to them, the owner of the house has unleashed a demonic nightmare that terrorizes our duo and begins killing their equally lazy counterparts. From there, gruesome supernatural hijinks ensue.

Housesitters plays off a self-aware humor by candidly admitting how microbudget of a feature it is, practically an ode to old B-movies where puppets were once used to be genuinely terrifying, but have since then become an epitome of cheap and poor filmmaking. It plays to its strengths simply by making a point of showcasing complete and utter goofiness. I’ve always been a fan of meta, so-dumb-it’s-brilliant comedy, and the effort to attain that in this film is visible and usually executed well, even if a few of its jokes fall flat.

Angie and Izzy are a duo of strong female protagonists that are hardly stereotypical; they’re porn-addicted couch potatoes who spend most of their time smoking pot and trying to get laid, not so differently than if a couple of thickheaded dudebros had taken their place. Watkins and Jirak have a great chemistry both comedically and emotionally, bringing all the good and bad attributes of a bromance in other juvenile comedies to ladies instead. I’m not sure if making the characters potheads was an attempt to pander to the stoner fans of Seth Rogen/James Franco films, since the detail wasn’t totally necessary and none of the wacky supernatural hijinks were induced by drug usage or a hallucinogenic trip. But the demonic possessions and a weird puppet monster were definitely able to finally get them off the couch–and despite the overall campy nature of the film, the acting was strong enough for the characters to appear genuinely terrified while still making us laugh.

In my own opinion (I know, opinions are like assholes, everyone’s got one), the best part of the film was a completely unrelated animated sequence akin to early, poor-quality EA games from the 90s, sandwiched between parts 1 and 2 and preceded by the nostalgic Coming Soon to Home Video bumper that we all know and love. It’s about three minutes of a trailer for Dancing About Barkitecture, about a bulldog with aspirations of being a building someday, all while teaming up with his other doggo buddies to rescue other animals from lab experiments. It’s scenes like these that signify, clearly, that Coffman knows exactly what he’s about. Most of the laughs derived from Housesitters are worthy of snorts or somewhat hard nose exhales, but damn, this sequence made me laugh HARD.

All this being said, being intentionally camp and silly is not an excuse for poor production quality, particularly the sound design that seems to be barely even glanced over since the day the boom op forgot to make everyone hold for room tone at the end of the day. Is it cute that they filmed nearly half the film on an iPhone? Sure. But the quality unfortunately gets to the point of distracting and removing you from this bizarre universe with a charming kitsch, where I actually would have liked to have stayed.

Housesitters needs a lot of technical and visual polish, but the stupid-smart humor is executed with an ungainly, yet graceful, hilarious panache.