Oliver Leader de Saxe suggests a film to avoid during lockdown: Zach Snyder’s Sucker Punch

You’d be hard pressed to find a more horrendously misconceived film than Zach Snyder’s Sucker Punch. From the nonsensical plot about skimpily clad women going on magical surrealist adventures to try and escape a brothel/insane asylum, to the offensively drab cinematography which dares to ask the question “what would the world look like if it was devoid of colour, and everything looked brown, miserable and unpleasant?”, almost nothing in this film works.

The acting is often unbearable and Snyder’s usual glossy style comes off as sleazy and voyeuristic. Yet, despite its shamelessly juvenile premise, it still manages to be one of the most excruciatingly dull movies I’ve ever seen, with action sequences so unengaging that it makes smacking two action figures together look like John Wick.

But it gets worse when the film starts exploring female empowerment and sexual assault. These subjects require a degree of nuance, of subtly – words completely foreign to Snyder’s adolescent brain. What results is a thinly-masked barrage of violent misogyny so nauseating that it feels like travelling back in time, complete with derogatory nicknames and needless eroticism to titillate the teenage boys in the audience. This truly is a cinematic experience to avoid.