Starring Scott Speedman and Wes Bentley. Rated 14A. Opens Friday, October 12, at the Cinemark Tinseltown

In a rare example of truth in advertising, Weirdsville is one strange little movie. Something of a Canadian-styled Trainspotting, this sharp-looking yet low-rent film is set in the small fictional town of Weedsville (hence the title), although it is actually a perpetually winter-locked, mostly nighttime Ontario amalgam of Toronto, Brantford, and Hamilton.

Our main subjects are a couple of scruffy addicts who are just smart enough to know they should at least think about quitting whatever it is they are currently smoking, snorting, or sniffing. Dexter (Felicity veteran Scott Speedman) has a bit more brainpower than shaggy Royce (American Beauty's Wes Bentley), who is hung up on sometime hooker Matilda (Taryn Manning, who also did the play-for-pay thing in Hustle & Flow).

Unfortunately, even by their raggedy-ass standards, the strong stuff they've been using has an especially harmful effect on Matilda and, next thing you know, our three louse ­keteers are hiding out in the rundown drive-in theatre where Dex used to work. Their visit is interrupted by a group of would-be Satan worshippers who aren't in a generous mood to begin with. Then there's the dealer (Raoul Bhaneja, trying too hard to be funny) who supplied the drugs in the first place. He wants his dough, the Satanists are after a human sacrifice, and Dex and Royce well, they'd be happy just to make it through the night.

There's nothing that original or substantial here. Okay, we haven't seen too many things like Matt Frewer, as a hippie millionaire, felled by a freak seasonal mishap. But, mostly, what makes the movie work is purely a matter of style.

Quebec-born director Allan Moyle, who has done work as hyper as Pump Up the Volume and as quiet as New Waterford Girl, with his uneven Empire Records somewhere in between, is here working from a so-so script by Willem Wennekers. He manages to make events dreamlike, gritty, and sardonic at the same time. Moyle's energy level keeps you interested, even through the most unbelievable bits at least until dwarves in medieval armour start attacking people. By then, I found the buzz was wearing off, but humour, like getting high, varies a lot from user to user. And hey, that's what makes it Weirdsville, man.