With Swiss Army Man, the directing duo that bills themselves as simply “Daniels” succumb to a very common shortcoming of first-time feature filmmakers: they’re better at showmanship than storytelling. Daniel Scheinert and Daniel Kwan wrote and directed the film, which begin with a scruffy castaway (Paul Dano) slipping his head into a makeshift noose, fully planning to off himself rather than spend one more moment in stranded isolation. He’s given pause when he spies a body that’s washed up on the beach. Hoping for companionship, he instead finds a corpse (Daniel Radcliffe). As it turns out, this waterlogged cadaver proves to be a far more helpful cohort than any living being could be.

Scheinert and Kwan are fearlessly fascinated with the grotesque pliability of the human form, something that was evident in the vivid short films that first garnered them attention. There’s a headlong inventiveness to the kinetic manipulations of the corpse, all nicely realized by Radcliffe, who gets extra credit for delivering one of those rare performances for which there is little true precedent. Even beyond that, the filmmakers clearly revel in challenging the audience with taboo scatalogical humor. It doesn’t take wild mental gymnastics to think of Swiss Army Man as little more than a lengthy attempt to make a fart joke into something poignant. The ease of that exercise in warped film theory speaks to the thinness of the finished project. Try as they might, Daniels can’t quite get the material to transcend its goofy hook. It’s concept without enough soul.

The film stays stalled in part because the lead character never develops much past the level of cipher. Dano is almost too well cast, locking in on the insular, lonely agony of the role to such a formidable degree that he can’t quite unlock the secret doors that would make him into a recognizable person. Dano carries the conceit of the piece capably, but doesn’t bring the swirl of inner life needed to help elevate the film into more than a cheeky gimmick. While it’s true that Scheinert and Kwan don’t give him much to work with, a little more glint and nuance from Dano would have gone a long way towards imbuing the material with beneficial layers. As it is within the film’s fiction, it’s left to Radcliffe to do all the useful work.