Nobody makes movies quite like Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos, and his 2024 dark comedy anthology film “Kinds of Kindness” is something like “The Twilight Zone” for perverts and sickos (in the most complimentary way). Emma Stone leads a cast of talented actors who each appear in a triptych of tales, playing different roles in each story, and the somewhat nihilistic fable is the most “Lanthimos” movie Lanthimos has ever made. 

Some fans were disappointed in “Kinds of Kindness” after the Academy Award-winning psychosexual delights of Stone and Lanthimos’s previous collaboration, “Poor Things,” which featured a script by “The Great” creator Tony McNamara, but “Kinds of Kindness” is a fascinating piece of work nonetheless. Lanthimos co-wrote “Kinds of Kindness” with his frequent collaborator Efthymis Filippou, who also wrote the director’s films “Alps,” “Dogtooth,” “The Lobster,” and “The Killing of a Sacred Deer,” and it’s a return to many of his unusual trademarks. Characters sometimes speak as if they’re detached from reality, delivering bizarre lines of dialogue with almost monotone clarity, and the humor is absolutely pitch dark. It’s weird stuff, and that means sometimes it’s easy to get lost and end up wondering what it all really means.

Each of the stories in “Kinds of Kindness” has a title: “The Death of R.M.F.,” “R.M.F. Is Flying,” and “R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich,” so maybe the best place to start with figuring out “Kinds of Kindness” is to figure out who — or what — is “R.M.F.”.

In the most literal terms, “R.M.F.” are the initials of a man (played by Yorgos Stefanakos) who serves as the narrative throughline in each of the stories. (He also has the initials embroidered on his shirt, though Margaret Qualley’s Vivian mistakes the “R” for a “B”.) In the first story, he is hired by controlling, twisted businessman Raymond (Willem Dafoe) to be killed by someone else he hires with the same initials. He’s eventually killed by Raymond’s obsessive former employee Robert (Jesse Plemons) and appears again in the third story, “R.M.F. Eats a Sandwich,” as a corpse that is brought back to life by Ruth (Qualley), a veterinarian with magical powers. In the second story he’s a helicopter pilot who rescues two researchers who were stuck on an island, including Liz (Stone), whose husband Daniel (Plemons) believes came back changed somehow.

Lanthimos told Variety that there’s no real meaning behind the character or his initials, explaining that they “didn’t want to have a main character reappearing, but a character that had a short time in the film.” And while “his presence was pivotal,” his actual name means nothing. Lanthimos left it up to audiences, saying, “You can apply any kind of explanation that you want or your own thoughts.”

Fans have tried to come up with their own explanations, and a discussion on the Lanthimos subreddit came up with some pretty decent ones, including “Random MotherF******,” “Random Male Figure,” “Redemption, Manipulation, Faith,” and more. There are many words that could apply to each of the stories and just as many interpretations, and that ambiguity is part of the film’s genius. Like many of Lanthimos’s films, “Kinds of Kindness” isn’t trying to give the audience any answers: it just wants them to ask questions.

Besides R.M.F., there is a central theme throughout “Kinds of Kindness” that binds the stories. Each part follows a character who will stop at nothing to get what they want. They all long for connection, though that connection must be with someone specific: in the first story, Robert only wants his extremely controlling boss Raymond to approve of him; in the second, Daniel just wants his wife Liz and refuses any substitute; and in the third, Emily wants to find her cult’s chosen one and be loved by her cult leaders, Omi (Dafoe) and Aka (Hong Chau). Each of these protagonists ends up separated from the object of their love/desire as well, as Robert is cast aside by Raymond for initially refusing to kill R.M.F., Liz is lost at sea, and Emily is kicked out of the cult after she is raped by her estranged husband and comes back to the cult “tainted.”

Each goes to extreme lengths to get what they want, and their varying levels of success aren’t presented as good or bad, leaving it up to the audience to decide whether or not it was all worth it. It’s interesting to note that in all three stories, the characters eschew having children in some way, as Robert slips his wife abortifacients on Raymond’s orders, Daniel rejects the Liz doppelgänger even though she’s fertile (and Liz is assumedly not), and Emily left her daughter with her husband despite clearly loving her and leaving her little gifts. Family and children are an easy stand-in for all kinds of sacrifices that people make for their jobs, romantic relationships, and faith, and these characters show that they’re willing to sacrifice it all. Sacrifice is a theme Lanthimos enjoys playing with (see also: “The Killing of a Sacred Deer”), and “Kinds of Kindness” takes it to its most absurd lengths.

In the second story, Daniel longs for his wife Liz to return after her research ship is lost at sea, but the woman that eventually returns does not seem like his wife. Her feet are slightly larger and none of her shoes fit, for starters, and she suddenly loves chocolate despite having always hated it. Her sexual appetites have also increased to a point where Daniel is concerned, and that’s taking into account the fact that the pair normally engage in group sex with their best friends. Everyone around him thinks that he’s caught in some kind of persecutory delusion and that Liz is exactly who she says she is, though the only other survivor from the island is in a coma. She came back different, and Daniel begins asking her to sacrifice herself to him. First, he asks her to cut off her thumb and cook it, then her liver.

The liver-removal kills Fake Liz and it seems like Daniel is some kind of monster when the real Liz appears at the door and the two are reunited. It’s sort of joyous, if you ignore the dead doppelgänger in the background. The short credits sequence between stories then shows the Land of Dogs where doppelgänger Liz said she lived, where dogs and humans had switched places and the humans were fed chocolate. We’ll never know exactly why R.M.F. rescued what are apparently slightly-off clones, or even how the real Liz got home, because it’s a fable and those parts really don’t matter! What matters is that Daniel knew who his wife really was and was willing to lose everything to find her and get rid of her imposter.

In the third story, cult members Emily (Stone) and Andrew (Plemons) are out seeking their cult’s messiah, a woman who will be able to bring the dead back to life. There are specific, odd criteria, and they travel around the country looking for people who just might fit. They only drink water from containers they brought with them, and it’s revealed that the water comes from the home of their leaders, Omi and Aka, who purify it with their tears. The members of the cult all have sex with one another and with Omi and Aka, but if they have sex with anyone outside of the cult it can “contaminate” them. Unfortunately, Emily is found to be contaminated when her ex-husband drugs and rapes her, which gets her kicked out of the cult. Even a near-fatal, long sit in a sweat lodge doesn’t “purify” her. She throws everything into finding the messiah so she can be allowed back into the cult, with terrible results.

It’s interesting because in the first two segments, the lead character ended up ostracized by choice. Robert refused to kill R.M.F. despite being comfortable with everything else he had been doing, while Daniel could have tried to accept that Liz had changed or simply left her instead of demanding his pound of flesh. Emily was only near her ex because she wanted to see her daughter, and for that she was punished by not only the assault itself, but also by being sent away from the one thing she truly cared about. It’s a heartbreaking commentary on sexual assault victims being blamed for their own victimhood, and it makes what happens next even more tragic.

Emily kidnaps Ruth (Qualley), who healed a deep cut on a dog’s leg as good as new, and takes her to the morgue to see if she is the chosen one. Ruth manages to resurrect R.M.F., who was dead after being run over by Robert in the first story. (How was he alive as a helicopter pilot in the second story? Maybe that’s why Liz was a doppelgänger, or maybe they’re out of order. Your guess is as good as ours.) Ecstatic that she can now get back into the cult, Emily speeds toward the estate with a drugged Ruth in the passenger seat, only to get into an accident and send the un-seatbelted Ruth flying through the windshield, where she dies. It feels like a bit of a nihilistic “everything was for nothing” kind of sick Lanthimos laugh, but it’s also a lesson in recognizing our flaws before they’re too late, as Emily drives like a stuntperson on “The Dukes of Hazzard” (even in motel parking lots). 

Sometimes life is just a mean joke, especially if you’re in a Yorgos Lanthimos movie.

After Ruth is killed and the final credits begin to roll, we get a colorful little mid-credits scene in which R.M.F. is seated outside of a restaurant called “Baby’s Snack Box.” He’s eating that sandwich from the final chapter’s name and gets ketchup all over his shirt, prompting a waitress to get him more napkins. Despite having been in two terrible car accidents and then being run over by a murderous Robert, dying, and being brought back to life, he’s still just here among the rest of us slobs, eating sandwiches and getting ketchup on his shirt. He’s enjoying the little things, I suppose, embracing the mundanity of it all in spite of the ridiculous circumstances of his existence. It’s absurdism at its core, which is really what Lanthimos movies are all about.