Halina Reijn’s Bodies Bodies Bodies sees a friend group of trust fund kids hunkering down in a mansion to drink, snort, and fuck their way through a hurricane. Except that’s not quite accurate. Two of the guests don’t fit in: the poorer Bee (Maria Bakalova) and much older Greg (Lee Pace) are only there as plus-ones, encountering everything from irritation to open hostility from their significant others’ old friends. Also, not everyone’s partaking of the free-flowing booze and coke: Sophie (Amandla Stenberg) is newly sober, and her stint in rehab is still a rocky subject. Also, these people are friends the way a rat king is a close circle of pals. They can’t untangle themselves, and they’re going to die.

That’s the summary I would love to leave you with if this film were as good as its best moments. Bodies Bodies Bodies has a sharp, smart vision behind it, and its escalating violence, backbiting, and mistrust gives it a genuinely engaging dramatic arc. The actors are good–I was especially fond of Myha’la Herrold as the hard-edged Jordan, whose detachment can’t lift her as far above the fray as she would like. The script has some good lines.

Unfortunately, while Bodies Bodies Bodies is good at being a horror film with touches of satirical comedy, the satire weakens the more the film leans on it. Comedy can bolster horror or provide necessary relief from it, and it sometimes succeeds in that here. But all too often, the movie’s skewering of Gen Z provides nothing but distance. There are jokes here that work as antidotes to empathy, because the whole thrust of them is, “Isn’t that exactly what these silly other people would do?” If it were entirely dark satire–even satire that very occasionally brushed up against more human characterization–this wouldn’t matter. But when the horror and dramatic structure have actual teeth, it’s a shame that Bodies Bodies Bodies keeps giving them squeaky chew toys instead of real meat.

Ah, well. Even with the occasional winks and hard nudges to your ribs, this is far from a bad film. There are scenes, moments, and even occasional long stretches that work perfectly well as they are, and the more naturally occurring jokes are genuinely funny. (It’s not a movie that focuses much on its visuals, aside from an excellent use of glowsticks, but Lee Pace’s terrifying light therapy mask is an A+ gag to throw into your slasher film.) The pacing of the back-half works well, especially in the last twenty minutes, and the movie nails the dismount. I just wish it were a little more earnest. When it gets its tongue out of its cheek, what it has to say is much more universal.

Bodies Bodies Bodies is streaming on Showtime.