Maddin’s third film opens with a hilariously absurd, blood-tinted PSA by an ominously lit old man warning children to exercise caution in their environment, a prologue that both establishes the loony conceit of the film (in the remote mountain region of Tolzbad, people must repress all expression so as to not incite avalanches) and functions as a sustained, unswerving mockery of restrictive societies that place unfair pressure on their people. In its two-part story of fatefully interconnected dysfunctional families, Careful ultimately posits that the result of this kind of oppressive social conditioning is a particularly strange brew of psychosomatic malnourishment: profound sexual timidity, deeply offbeat interpersonal skills and incestuous hang-ups all play a key part in Careful’s narrative. Maddin’s keen understanding of the ways in which impressionable minds find unlikely respites from these toxic environments manifests itself in Tolzbad’s labyrinthine geography, within which doomed lovers find cavernous hideaways from their all-seeing parents. Scored by portentous ascending and descending melodies that suggest children’s lullabies torqued into minor keys, Careful navigates these vertiginous landscapes and fragile emotions with the verve of an early German expressionist artifact.