( CNN ) -- Zack Snyder evidently had an awesome idea for a video game . But for some reason , he decided to do it as a movie first . I mean , it 's playing in movie theatres , so I guess you would have to call it a movie , albeit a sorry excuse for one . Snyder has accrued some status with younger fans through his boldly stylized retakes on George Romero 's `` Dawn of the Dead , '' Frank Miller 's `` 300 '' and Alan Moore 's `` Watchmen . '' So far , the raw material has been distinctive enough to camouflage Snyder 's increasingly threadbare bag of tricks : toggling between slow and fast motion , extreme close-ups and vertiginous long shots . He feeds back the kind of bastardized cinematic effects that comic books , pop videos and games took from film in the first place . It 's a high-impact , low-return aesthetic that promotes a tawdry gloss above character and story . Talking of which , `` Sucker Punch '' is Snyder 's first stab at original material . And when I say `` stab , '' I mean he prods at it anxiously with a long blade , as if he wants to make sure it 's well and truly dead . If Snyder has any call on the attention of a reasonably intelligent adult -- and on the evidence of this sleazy atrocity , that 's a mighty big `` if '' -- it 's as a pioneer of a post-narrative cinema , in which sensation and spectacle are paramount and situation is as fluid as a digital composite . Here he conjures giants , zeppelins , and dragons all in the blink of an eye . But are these things enough when they come out of thin air ? Clearly not , as `` Sucker Punch '' falls back repeatedly on the hoariest of melodramatic cliches . And so we 're treated to orphaned sisters abused and ( in one case ) murdered by an evil stepfather , who commits the surviving girl ( Emily Browning ) to an asylum and bribes the warden to arrange a lobotomy . All this within the first three minutes . Browning ­ -- known only as `` Baby Doll '' -- contrives a mental escape route into an alternative reality , a bordello/burlesque house . But this , too , is a dangerous place controlled by rapacious men . She finds another rabbit hole in performing interpretative dance routines ( which we never see ) that transfix her captors , while projecting herself and her fellow inmates ­ -- including Abbie Cornish and Vanessa Hudgens -- into virtual reality adventure game scenarios : a Shaolin temple duel ; a WWI assignment behind enemy lines ; a ticking time bomb ; etc. , etc . iReporter : One out of five for `` Sucker Punch '' On some level , these episodes are configured as empowering fantasies ; the girls are pulling the triggers , after all . They 're also heavily fetishized affairs involving high heels , suspenders and plenty of skin . Kudos to Snyder ( who co-wrote the screenplay with Steve Shibuya ) for letting his imagination run wild . It 's just a pity that imagination is so drastically circumscribed by the lurid `` ho couture '' culture of shoot-em-ups and soft porn . In the end , what can you say about a filmmaker who thinks nothing of laying a cover of the Eurythmics ' `` Sweet Dreams '' ( lyric : `` Some of them want to abuse you '' ) over scenes of a man menacing two young girls ? Or the Pixies ' magisterial `` Where Is My Mind '' over the committal scene ? That Snyder is unafraid of overstatement ? Or that he imagines an audience as lobotomized as his benumbed Baby Doll ? See , the suckers here are the poor mugs who leave their dollars at the door . And for what ? A seedy , desaturated , overstimulated simulation of a real movie . Schlock treatment for comatose gamers , and a bomb with a bright pink cherry on top .
`` Sucker Punch '' stars Emily Browning , Abbie Cornish , Vanessa Hudgens . The film is based on the comic book series of the same name by Brian K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples. Tom Charity calls it `` a seedy , desaturated , overstimulated simulation of a real movie ''