Starring Mads Mikkelsen. In Danish, with English subtitles. Rating unavailable.

Plunk the guys from Dumb and Dumber on the Island of Dr. Moreau and you begin to get the kind of extra-dark comedy afoot, or maybe aclaw, in Men & Chicken.

Danish writer-director Anders Thomas Jensen previously scripted such dark comedies as Wilbur Wants to Kill Himself and The Green Butchers. Those films share a skeptical eye for human nature, plots built on family secrets, and Mads Mikkelsen. Here, the brooding Dane plays the more absurdly clownish of two antisocial siblings. His Elias is an obnoxious, self-important lout and furious masturbator—the sort who would go on a blind date with a therapist for free therapy and then make fun of her wheelchair.

He admires older bro Gabriel, played by Swedish-born David Dencik, who was a pensive baldy in both versions of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. Gabe’s an intimacy-averse egghead with some success as a writer and teacher. They only have cleft palates and poor people skills in common, but learn they were both adopted, and that their real father resides on a remote Danish island.

There, they encounter three bizarre brothers, each with a cleft palate but no other similarities, who live in a crumbling sanatorium—a real place, actually near Berlin—where they’re surrounded by animals, cheese, and extra-creepy lab equipment. Elias fits right in with their tendency to beat the crap out of each other with whatever taxidermy is at hand. But Gabriel digs deeper, yielding increasingly weird revelations on what constitutes family and, some will argue, comedy. It isn’t everyone’s cup of poisoned tea, but if you’re up for some cracked misanthropy, this Chicken’s for you.