I was indeed unprepared... that's not why I dislike it

Rating: 5/10 (16 April 2011)

Browning, aka Creepy Eyes, is taken to a mental institution because she mimes through the opening of non-stop thunderstorms concluding with her firing a pistol leading people to debate endlessly if that was what killed her younger sibling or if it was the stepfather(and of course, the ones talking about how the heck this thing is supposed to make sense). Once there, she retreats to two layers of imagination, so that people who loved this and can't justify it can compare it to Inception. The first is at a cat-house(apparently also meant to have people trapped, albeit this is barely established) where she meets other young sets of legs of varying acting ability, the second has this handful of hot chicks taking on Nazi zombies and Orcs using small arms in bad-ass(well, some will find them monotonous, and they are repetitive and like looking at someone else play a video-game), stylish, well-choreographed action sequences(if excessive in amount of slow-motion... that's not new, at least he doesn't speed up any footage, it's just naturally fast) that mix different periods well, and produce the only memorable visuals(Snyder's strong suit) of this(and they are few and far between, clearly some of the ones that do not reach this level were expected to... much of this has unimpressive cinematography and near the end a lot of shots are really awkward because of setup that end in a powerfully underdone pay-off), setting it apart from the bland look of the rest of this. What we have is a combination of two sub-genres, the high-octane Hollywood Summer blockbuster and the prison escape movie, and they're like putting oil and water together. It feels like Zack, who I do hope goes back to adapting the work of others, had the shoot-outs in his head and just wrote *something* to fit inbetween them. The climax is weak, as with Dawn of the Dead and 300. ZS overbears the crap out of the soundtrack, exactly as with Watchmen(every song clearly means something specific to the scene, and it's always obvious and takes you out of it). I know, there's supposed to be this amazing depth to this, even if the metaphors are pretty straightforward. Maybe I am missing something, even so, it's just not that compelling to watch. Character development is lacking(Emily gets by largely with pouting), and the dialog is decent at best. We have an old guy who symbolizes wisdom and spouts American fortune cookie advice whenever we see him. There is inspiration drawn from cultural sources, including Animé, and you'd be better of just sticking with the original. There is mild violence and disturbing content in this(you can tell they wanted to go further, this wasn't meant to be PG-13). I recommend this to, well, people who find themselves agreeing with the people who seem to defend this regardless of what others say. Everyone else, maybe borrow it from a friend and fast-forward through anything that doesn't have bullets. 5/10