If you don’t gag at least once watching Mary Dauterman’s feature debut Booger, then you’re probably doing it wrong. This is easily one of the most phenomenological films I’ve ever seen. We got barf, sorry “hairball,” bags before our screening. I will confess that on at least one occasion I felt that the need to use mine.

It’s crucial that the audience feels how Anna (Grace Glowicki) feels. Anna is suffering. Her best friend, Izzy (Sofia Dobrushin), has recently passed. Her job is a dead-end one, where her annoying boss chastises her for her lack of production. Her boyfriend Max (Garrick Bernard) implores her to no longer repress her feelings, but Anna cannot face them.

When Anna is bit by Booger, Izzy’s mercurial cat, it results in a nasty bite wound. As Anna spirals further and further, the wound continues to fester and fester. Metaphorically, Dauterman’s thinking here is easily apparent. Left untreated, Anna’s grief continues to eat away at her like a nasty wound.

In Booger, Glowicki (Strawberry Mansion) is impeccable. Her annoyance at everyone around her brings much needed humor to this film, which exists somewhere between a horror film and a quirky indie comedy. Yet, her performance is also impressively physical. She has to retch up hairballs and stumble around drunk. Facially, much of the film’s emotion rides upon her. Anna is clearly scared, and yet must put on an affect that nothing can hurt her. Glowicki hits all marks with aplomb.

As a piece of storytelling, Booger is remarkable. Anna’s arc is so brilliantly realized, it culminates in an impressively subtle shift that I cannot state without spoiling the text. Dauterman told us that she hoped we’d either “love it” or “really hate it.” I have to say, I fell into the former camp.