THE BLAZING WORLD. With Carlson Young, Udo Kier, Dermot Mulroney, Vinessa Shaw, Soko, John Karna. Written by Carlson Young & Pierce Brown. Directed by Carlson Young. Unrated. 99 minutes. Available on demand.

Razzie dazzle

It’s not true that every film that comes out of the Sundance Film Festival is arty and pretentious nonsense, but it’s true often enough that that credential should be a warning sign. It’s certainly true of THE BLAZING WORLD, a film that looks gorgeous and has a lovely musical track, but which starts to fall apart the moment characters start to speak. First-time feature director Carlson Young, who also stars, might have a strong future in front of and behind the camera, but she might want to work on her storytelling skills before writing another screenplay (credited to her and Pierce Brown).

The film opens with dreamlike images of young twin girls collecting fireflies. Their parents (Vinessa Shaw, Dermot Mulroney) seem to be in a rapidly declining marriage, which is why no adult is present when one of the girls drowns in their swimming pool. Setting the stage for the obscurities yet to come, we see a mysterious figure (Udo Kier) trying to summon the surviving sister into some sort of hole in space. Jump ahead fifteen or so years and Margaret (Young), the surviving sister, returns home to collect her belongings. Her parents, who apparently can no longer stand even being in the same room together, are selling the house.

Here’s where you either decide to go along for the ride or not: Margaret sees the weird man take her little sister through the hole and she dives in after them. She’s given the task of collecting four keys all the while finding herself in increasingly surreal situations, including recurring images of the weird man trying to drown her in the bathtub. Her parents–or, at least, odd caricatures of them–hold two of the keys. Why any of this is happening is never really explained, so what passes for a resolution really resolves nothing, unless you choose to interpret the opaque happenings as a healing process for her.

And that’s really the problem. Carlson has clearly crafted the film as a showcase for herself as director, writer, and actress. While she sets up the impressive visuals, combining locations with imaginative art direction, she makes the mistake of letting on that she has something profound to say and then doesn’t say it. It’s the sort of movie some critics enjoy because it allows them to project their own interpretations on it and–for the same reason–one that turns off many viewers because they feel it should have come with a decoder ring. There are movies that are surreal and even downright bizarre which work because the filmmakers didn’t look at the project as a game of “keep away” with the audience.

It’s pointless to talk about the performances since the actors have been given one-note characters to play. Shaw is the needy, neglected upper-class wife, Mulroney is the drunken and abusive lout, and Kier is forced to rely on the same shtick he does whenever he’s cast in an underwritten role. Young is engaging enough and you want to root for her, but it becomes increasingly difficult to understand precisely what you’d be rooting for.

“The Blazing World” may be visually stunning, but otherwise it quickly burns out.•••

Daniel M. Kimmel is a veteran movie critic and author of a host of film-related books. His most recent novel is Banned in Boston. He is the 2018 recipient of the Skylark Award given by the New England Science Fiction Association. He lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.