Welcome to Me Kristen Wiig, Wes Bentley, Linda Cardellini. Directed by Shira Piven. Rated R. Opens Friday; also available on VOD.

At first, it’s hard to know what to make of Welcome to Me, and as the movie goes on, it doesn’t really get any easier. The movie stars Kristen Wiig as a mentally unstable woman named Alice Klieg, who stops taking her medication and soon after wins $86 million in the lottery, which she uses to fund her own bizarre talk show (segments include the on-air neutering of dogs, high-protein cooking and re-enactments of traumas from Alice’s past). Alice’s oddities are darkly funny but also incredibly sad, and the filmmakers tread a fine line between the two, more effectively than not. It’s like a cross between “Weird Al” Yankovic’s UHF and a Lifetime movie, and Alice becomes a sort of tragic figure even as her behavior grows more unpleasant and potentially abusive. Her story ends a little too neatly, but the journey to get there is as strange and surprising as an episode of Alice’s talk show.