‘Felt’ an atmospheric character study of an artist going mad

The indie horror film “Felt,” about a young woman’s unraveling, wades into textures of unhinged personal expression with a bracing intimacy, at its most effective coming across like a millennial feminist spin on Roman Polanski’s “Repulsion.”

Artist Amy Everson, who co-wrote the story with director Jason Banker, plays an artist named Amy (yes, there’s personal experience being drawn from here) who appears to be losing touch with friends and reality. Amy is driven to wearing self-made bodysuits with phallic appendages and either blank or garishly rendered masks, and she’s prone to weird asides about death and violence. She seems unready for companionship until sweet-faced Kenny (Kentucker Audley) enters the picture.

Things go well until they don’t, at which point remembering Amy’s penchant for woodsy role-playing with a sword and red hood leaves little doubt about where this film is headed. Until its regrettably foregone conclusion, though, “Felt” is a moodily disturbing character study of a besieged woman for whom art is engagement and coping mechanism, but also conversely a source of alienation and even a weapon.

With so much conversation these days about the effects of rape culture, “Felt,” with its atmospheric DIY aesthetics, enters the discussion as a corrective chiller that can best be described as compassionately perverse about one type of pushback.

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“Felt.”

MPAA rating.

Running time: 1 hour, 20 minutes.

Playing at Laemmle’s Royal 3, West Los Angeles.