Sucker Punch, a barrage of green-screen effects and comic-book portentousness from 300 and Watchmen director Zack Snyder, is hands-down the most nightmarishly awful film of the year. A field day for schoolgirl fetishists and fanboys with a penchant for steampunk (but with Snyder's leaden dialogue, you've got to call it steamclunk), this staggering failure borrows from Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge, Marc Caro and Jean-Pierre Jeunet's The City of Lost Children, Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill, and a variety of psych-ward melodramas from The Snake Pit to The Uninvited.
If that sounds like it'd make for a cool mash-up, maybe it would have - if Snyder had anything on his mind apart from exploding zeppelins, fire-breathing dragons, Japanese samurai fights, and Carla Gugino doing a campy Polish accent. One of the creepier aspects of the plot - if you can call this ricocheting pastiche a plot - is that Baby Doll (Emily Browning), the sorry lass who has been committed to Lennox House for the Mentally Insane by her sleazeball stepdad, is set to have a frontal lobotomy.
