The Bad Batch
Directed by Ana Lily Amirpour
- action
- horror
- science fiction
- thriller
- romance
The story
After being exiled to a fenced-off wasteland, Arlen is kidnapped by a group of cannibals and goes on a journey to reunite a missing girl with her father.
What it’s like
Sun-bleached and dust-choked, with the desert glare doing most of the work: wide, washed-out daylight over flat sand, then saturated neon and smoky Quonset-hut interiors at night, the colours bleeding into one another like a bad trip. Ana Lily Amirpour frames her figures with stark, deliberate stillness and lets long quiet beats hang before sudden, jolting cuts, and the sound design leans on wind, distant generator hum and a synth-and-pulse score that swells under the dread. The vibe is dusty, dreamlike unease with odd flickers of tenderness, best for a late, alone watch when you want something strange and slow-burning rather than cosy. Intensity is high: amputation and bodily harm are shown directly, there is cannibalism and kidnapping, drug use, and sudden brutal violence that lands hard, though the gore is more matter-of-fact than lingering. Stylised and unsettling, it suits viewers who want an arthouse take on the post-apocalyptic desert, with the emotional thread a wounded outsider slowly finding connection amid the cruelty.
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