'The Bad Batch' is bound to infuriate, but may become a cult classic

In the languid, dystopian new movie The Bad Batch, Suki Waterhouse -- the model-turned-actress - sports a pair of tight shorts with a prominently placed wink and a smile on the back. Watching the movie, I was struck by the ambivalence of that image.

Is this movie supposed to be funny? Is it supposed to be profound? Is it supposed to be about anything?

It's certainly terrific looking, with a killer soundtrack and a striking aesthetic that conjures a more chilled out Mad Max world of cannibals and scroungers.

After an intriguing opening, the movie settles into more of a mood piece and if the groaning, sighing and seat-shifting audience members who sat around me are any indication, it's not an audience-pleaser.

Still, The Bad Batch has a sensational quality too it. At times its dreamy, slow pace tried my patience, but its audacity impressed me too and it provides further evidence that Keanu Reeves (who is essentially the villain here, albeit a fairly non-threatening one) is in the middle of a truly impressive career revival, following great turns in the John Wick movies and The Neon Demon.

The movie's flaws are easy to pick apart -- it's overlong, it lacks a sense of danger or narrative drive, its dialogue can land like a thud and while Waterhouse is stunning she doesn't have a lot of the gravitas needed to truly be able to carry a lot of her scenes, which are often totally wordless.

Jason Momoa, of Game of Thrones fame, is a striking physical presence throughout, although he is saddled with one of the all time worst Cuban accents I've ever heard, and that conceit nearly torpedoes his performance.

I was never really bored by the movie, and I was fascinated by the world up on the screen. Director Ana Lily Amirpour is definitely up to something here and it felt like a movie that might grow in my esteem without the initial expectation of higher stakes and action.

And while I usually roll my eyes when people make the case that a film works better under the influence, this may be one of the rare examples where it's true. It certainly feels as if the film emerged from a dream, instead of coherent plot construction.

The Bad Batch is a hard film to recommend without caveats, but it does feel like an original, though undeniably indulgent, vision, and so I don't regret seeing it for a second. And I will say that the more I think about it, the more it grows on me.