Back in the late eighties, early nineties, Dutch director Paul Verhoeven was carving out a nice little career for himself. After helming three mega-huge hits back to back (RoboCop, Total Recall and Basic Instinct) it looked like he could do no wrong. And then he directed Showgirls. Since then, he’s pretty much become the invisible man in Hollywood.

The film was universally panned, and is generally considered one of the worst films ever made. It’s not often a film that bad comes along, but when a big name falls, they fall hard. Meet this decade’s Showgirls: Sucker Punch, and its director Zack Snyder should be very afraid.

After accidentally shooting her sibling dead (she was aiming for her step-dad, but you know, accidents within the home do happen), Baby Doll (Emily Browning) is admitted to a rather grim all-girls loony bin.

If that wasn’t troubling enough, she’s been placed on a list to be lobotomised in five days time. However, she’s not going down without a fight, oh no. It transpires that using the often neglected power of dance, Baby Doll can create worlds that she and her fellow pretty nut jobs can interact with; in them, they are guided by a Wise Man (Scott Glenn) who aids them in their battle against evil.

These worlds are rich with all manner of enemies for this band of babes to dispose of; if they can succeed, they can pick up the very objects that can help them escape the asylum. But the High Roller (Jon Hamm) and his thugs won’t make it easy for them.

And this season's collection is inspired by the muted colours of war. It's a killer look we're sure you'll agree.

It’s difficult to understand not only where Zack Snyder went wrong with this film, but how he managed to do so on such an epic scale. Every single piece of it is filmmaking at its ugliest. The main culprit has to be the story; it wouldn’t be so bad if it was laughable – at least then it would generate a relatively positive emotion – but it’s nothing short of unintelligible. For instance, the premise that Baby Doll can create these worlds through the powerful medium of dance is never explained, she just can. It’s also never explained how she can adopt superhuman powers whilst in these alternative worlds; the ones created by the power of dance, just in case you missed that nugget of information.

The film itself would have been the perfect vehicle of ridicule for a pop band, just like Spice World was for The Spice Girls and Seeing Double was for S Club Seven. This film would have suited Girls Aloud down to the ground; they certainly couldn’t have done a worse job of it than the motley crew of underwear models they seemingly hired. They’re certainly attractive enough in their Agent Provocateur costumes, but their collective acting abilities would look embarrassing in the most amateurish of school plays.

The film’s one saving grace possibly is its look; Snyder proved with his 300 that if you hook enough Vic 20’s together, they can create visually alluring worlds. Having said that, the colours are heavily muted in this one, making it not only dark, but also on the dull side a lot of the time.

He doesn’t help himself with a truly dire soundtrack either. The first ten minutes of the film feels like a music video that MTV would put out in the wee small hours just to fill some dead air time. And it doesn’t get any better with the dreariest of teen angst track after track.

Some might consider the action sequences its one redeemable feature, but in truth, none of them excite on any level. There’s also nothing here that we haven’t seen before, only a hundred times better. If Snyder wants to borrow from iconic films such as Kill Bill, he needs to do a far better job than this. On this poor form it’s safe to say that he is not the new Tarantino. And if you’re a gamer, many of the opponents look eerily familiar, particularly Killzone’s Helghast. So again, not very original.

So where does this leave Snyder exactly? Similar to Verhoeven, this film comes off the back of three successful films (Dawn of the Dead, 300 and Watchmen. His animated owl flick Legend of the Guardians doesn’t count), although not quite in the same league as the Dutchman achieved. Up next he’s re-re-booting the Superman franchise with Superman: The Man of Steel; if that one doesn’t take off, then Snyder could find himself in seriously murky waters.

The one thing that may work in his favour is that despite many Hollywood studios having memories like elephants, Sucker Punch is utterly forgettable.

Still, at least one person could come out of this mess in good shape; instead of a director’s career going up in flames being described as ‘doing a Verhoeven’, it could possibly now be updated to ‘doing a Snyder’, that should make Paul happy at least.