The latest critical punchbag from the slick style geek Zack Snyder (300; Watchmen) is a deliriously dumb slice of softcore neo-feminist schlock. It’s a big-budget Z-movie with a comic-book frame about a waif called Baby Doll (Emily Browning) who is committed to an asylum by her evil stepfather. While waiting to undergo a lobotomy she finds a mental rabbit hole in the form of fantasies about a bordello and dreams within dreams involving dragons, ticking timebombs and trench warfare with steampunk zombies. Snyder’s sleazy fetishism and soft/hard, fast/slow tics soon wear thin, though not as thin as his pretensions to profundity.
Zack Snyder, 12A (109min)