Director-writer Ana Lily Amirpour's first feature, "A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night" from 2014, was such an original, revelatory vision _ a hallucinatory vampire story set in an otherworldly mashup of California and Iran shot in a luminescent black and white _ that it set the bar impossibly high for what she decided to do next. Sadly, her latest, "The Bad Batch" doesn't come close to clearing that hurdle.
Certainly, like its predecessor, "The Bad Batch" is visually arresting. Working again with cinematographer Lyle Vincent but in color this time, Amirpour comes up with some dazzling imagery. And once again she puts a young woman front and center of her fantasy, speculative fiction tale. But looks and female empowerment alone can't spackle over a dull story and lethargic pacing.
"The Bad Batch" is set in a dusty, dystopian, post-apocalyptic near-future _ don't yawn yet _ where criminal offenders are dropped off behind a boundary in a lawless desert wasteland (it's supposed to be Texas but it's obviously really California). That's how we meet Arlen (British model Suki Waterhouse) who soon finds herself the prisoner of a tribe of bodybuilder cannibals, called the Bridge People, who chop off one of her arms and legs. She manages to escape and find refuge in Comfort, a cultish society with the trappings of a civilization _ something resembling medical care, working toilets, a DJ _ run by a somnambulant, Hugh Hefner-ish leader (Keanu Reeves). But they don't hack off appendages in Comfort so she goes with it.
While outside the gates of Comfort one day, Arlen runs across a woman from the Bridge community with a little girl, Honey (Jayda Fink). Arlen kills the woman and takes the girl, not knowing she's the daughter of cannibal leader Miami Man (Jason Momoa). Of course, Miami Man wants Honey back.
There are similarities here to George Miller's "Mad Max" universe, but Amirpour's world is stripped of action, momentum and humor. About halfway through, audiences may be praying for a car chase or a special guest appearance from The Humungus (he'd fit right in with the bodybuilders).
Amirpour also squanders a cast that includes Diego Luna, Jim Carrey and Giovanni "Blink-and-You'll-Miss-Him" Ribisi.
Amirpour may have something to say about feminism, politics, and building a wall to keep undesirables out of society, but it's all rendered in dull terms and no amount of clever pop-music symbolism on the soundtrack _ Ace of Base's '90s hit "All That She Wants" _ is going to change that.
OK, you can yawn now.
