Sci-fi, like fantasy, is a wonderful genre because it lends itself easily to metaphor and fable. We learn about ourselves more readily if the framing is fantastical.

The Black Hole, written and directed by Moonika Siimets, understands that pairing beautifully. It's a marriage of bleak humor, urban fantasy, and over-the-top sci-fi horror that has a deep love and empathy for its downtrodden characters. Presented through a series of vignettes sharing a similar extra-terrestrial starting point, The Black Hole is a rich, deeply funny, and ultimately uplifting oddity unlike anything else out there.

The structure is similar to Four Rooms, the delightfully grotesque Tim Roth farce from the 90s. In a sprawling apartment complex somewhere in suburban Estonia, occupants encounter aliens and fantastical beings not from our world as they try to navigate daily troubles and financial woes in the process. You'd think seeing an actual alien would disrupt things more than usual, but not so here. In one of the consistently funny parts of Siimets's wry script, the fact that everyone is more annoyed by an extra hassle on top of everything else never fails to elicit a laugh.

The four stories play out under three sections: Life Worth Living, The Mystery of the Wooden Shoe, and Apple Pie. Each one inspired by stories from the books of Armin Kõomägi and Andrus Kivirähk.

My favorite is the first one, Life Worth Living, where two women dream of a better life across the sea in Finland, but are thwarted at every turn by those who've made it and won't share in their good fortune. One night, as they return to what little they have in this world, they meet an alien who offers the duo a deal: 1000 Euros for one night of poking and prodding in a purely scientific manner. What could go wrong?

The satire here is pointed and unsubtle, yet Siimets has such a wonderful eye for the human condition it works nonetheless. More than that, it's so poignant and funny in ways that it makes the audience squirm as it drives the point home. The aliens offering money for scientific experiments appear sweet and silly, yet they're all too happy to introduce limp dick energy into the mix without warning. Siimets smartly plays the scene for scares and laughs in equal measure. It reminds us that no matter how seemingly harmless something appears, things are never fair the moment money exchanges hands.

At the same time, just a few floors down, a personal trainer in a rundown gym discovers a woman crying in the showers. Their tentative bond is disrupted by a spider the size of a small pig who happens to live in their apartment.

The love story plays on familiar meet-cute tropes. They just happen to involve demonic entities that may or may not be dangerous to everyone involved. It's here that Siimets once again shows her versatility. The Black Hole never stays in a comfortable place for long. Instead, it's funny, tragic, scary, and deeply moving all at once.

Because of its start-and-stop nature, The Black Hole loses a tiny bit of momentum towards the end. After such a strong start, the other stories have to compete with the rest of the film, and it's not a fair proposition. None of the tales are bad, yet the latter half isn't as strong as the superb first one. Which isn't a knock on the film, either. It just means that it doesn't go from fantastic to beyond, only to merely good.

This is the kind of genre cinema I love to applaud. It is the work of talented artists who fearlessly play with convention. A film that feels homely, yet has the scope and ambition of far more expensive productions. Imagine a Nordic crossover between Black Mirror and Sinners, and you're part of the way there. The Black Hole is a small, unassuming treat that delights and disgusts in equal measure.

It's the kind of film everyone claims they want to see more in cinemas. Well, here's your chance. It's playing in Finnish cinemas starting on May 9th.