Like Elvis, Nicolas Cage is a pop culture figure who undergoes a revival every decade or so as a new generation rediscovers him, or new contemporaries find fresh reasons to appreciate the wonders of this sometimes forlorn icon of “out there.”

His latest run at relevence started with “Pig” and seemed to peak with the broken promise of “The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent.” But now, here’s “Dream Scenario,” an even more “out there” appreciation and ingenious use of not just the “massive talent,” but the oddball baggage carried by an Oscar winner still-remembered for eating a bug “in character” in “Vampire’s Kiss” some 35 years ago.

Who but the B-and-C-movie devouring Cage would take a flyer on a little known and under-credentialied Norwegian filmmaker (Kristoffer Borgli did music videos and shorts, and “Sick of Myself”) in a movie that touches on unearned notoriety and its impact on an undeserving, ill-equipped academic who finds himself lauded, feted, then reviled and hunted for appearing in the dreams of scores, then hundreds and then millions of strangers.

“Weird” doesn’t quite cover it. But the film’s oddness is its own recommendation. And while the windmills it tilts at are illusory and, we suspect, still spinning in the breeze, Cage is at his Cagiest in this creepy, endlessly-awkward satire of fame and infamy.

Paul Matthews is a balding, dad-bodied evolutionary biologist at Osler U, a boring, under-achieving family man with a loving wife (Julianne Nicholson) who has her own career, and two smart and “normal” daughters — one a tween (Lily Bird), the other a teen (Jessica Clements).

His big gripe is how he’s never rolled up his sleeves to publish his “ANT-telligence” groupthink thesis in a book, and that a former lover is about to publish on that very subject. His academic career isn’t really that fulfulling. His students are easily distracted from his lectures on why zebras developed stripes, until that day when a lot more interesting distraction pops up.

Paul is turning up in their dreams. Not all of them. Not all at once. He’s just “there,” an eyewitness to whatever trauma the nightmare delivers, a befuddled voyeuristic “bystander” in his glasses, sweater or sometimes that too-practical oversized winter coat we see him traipsing about campus in while wearing his too-practical waterproof Storm Chaser slippers.

Paul’s reactions to hearing this — from the students, colleagues, strangers at restaurants, family members and old flames– is befuddlement and annoyance at how “passive” he appears to be, rattling his “inadequate loser” insecurity complex.

“”Still searching for the insult,” is how one ex puts it.

But as this “virus” spreads, his teen daughter notes his growing notoriety and he grasps at that straw.

“So, I’m finally cool, huh?”

Wife Janet, who came from money and whose last name pushover Paul took, advises caution. But when Paul is approached by an ethically-sketchy PR/marketing start-up founder (Michael Cera, terrific), who envisions talking the dream traveler into promoting Sprite with his newfound “Most interesting person in the world” status, Paul sees this as his chance to change his fate, his image and his publishing history.

NOW he’ll get to write and publiush that book.

That’s when it all abruptly goes south.

Pinning down what this picture is about may be its biggest challenge for any viewer. Is it about fickle Internet fame, “cancel culture” and the final frontier of targeted product marketing — product placement in our dreams?

Paul’s many humiliations don’t point to “growing” or “knowing.” His department chair (Tim Meadows) might be his only friend in the world, and even that has its limits. His wife may see her own ways of cashing in on this notoriety, but the minute things turn dark… And there’s that snobby former classmate (Dylan Baker) forced to finally reckon with him, only to offend him anew as Paul’s dream appearances turn into murderous somnambulent assaults, scaring every friend and stranger he meets.

Might the film be simply a portrait of a life of some success but little “accomplishment,” one of “quiet desperation” bent into something sinister in pursuit of fame or infamy surfing The Attention Economy?

“Dream Scenario” is all of that, and less. A screenplay that doesn’t add up to the sum of its parts, it’s a picture that stumbles along rather than progresses in any strictly linear sense.

But that sometimes frustrating unconventionality — sometimes funny, often not — and the riveting presence of Nic Cage on center stage recommend it, in spite of everything else. Or maybe because of everything else.

Rating: R for language, violence and some sexual content.

Cast: Nicolas Cage, Julianne Nicholson, Dylan Gelula, Lily Bird, Dylan Baker, Tim Meadows and Michael Cera,

Credits: Scripted and directed by Kristoffer Borgli. An A24 release.

Running time: 1:42