As Infrared recently showed, with the right role, The Room sidekick Greg Sestero can act. While Miracle Valley isn’t his greatest showcase, he proves he can direct, too — on his first outing, no less.

With girlfriend Sarah (model Angela Mariano, doing just fine in her acting debut) down in the dumps due to a gravely ill mom, David (Sestero) takes her on a weekend road trip to an out-of-the-way ranch in the unforgiving Arizona desert. Besides, he’s trying to snap a pic of the elusive, never-before-photographed “silver hawk.”

Birds should be his least concern, given the area’s bats: the members of a cult settled in the area. When a menacing motorcyclist (scene-stealing live wire Rick Edwards, Skatetown U.S.A.) invites them to an event — Father Rick’s Awakening — a spiritually thirsty Sarah talks David into going.

Upon their departure, David’s pal jokes, “Don’t drink the Kool-Aid!” As we’ve established before, the noxious beverage he’s referencing was Flavor Aid. Still, the sugar-powder shoe fits; with Miracle Valley being about a cult, the friend’s barb soon no longer lands as funny.

So you think you know where Miracle Valley is going. And you’re right … but also not. Sestero’s script follows the well-tread path of all krazy-kook movies before it, until he chooses where to head next seemingly by throwing a stack of old Marvel Comics in the air — The Incredible Hulk and The Tomb of Dracula in particular — and letting the fallen pages guide him.

That’s largely a compliment. While he doesn’t always make the right choice, he at least makes a different choice. In doing so, Miracle Valley upends your expectations while fulfilling your hunger for exploitation, and leaves a good-looking corpse. With the epilogue at Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic Fallingwater home, how could it not? —Rod Lott