Suckerpunch
Film
Directed by Zack Snyder

Suckerpunch is a movie about a young, abused, teenage girl who attempts to shoot her abuser and ends up killing her sister and is then sent to an asylum. It doesn’t show in the movie when exactly this is set but it shows scenes from her real life (in around the 1940s) and in her imaginary world to be around the same time (during World War 2). Despite it not being her fault that her sister is dead (she was in a traumatic situation where the bullet bounced and hit the wrong person) her abuser lies and claims it to be murder.
This movie shows the different preferences in treating disorders and trauma along with showing how they used to be treated in earlier times. It is also very interesting as a “dark” kind of movie, which looked into deeper issues (despite its appearances). Suckerpunch shows us how modern treatment is preferable and is a lot less traumatic than in older times. Her treatment ranges from talk therapy – where abuse victims were made to feel more confident in their abilities – to a lobotomy – an old treatment where a chisel is inflicted to sever nerves in the brain and render a person emotionless and lifeless. This is, today, still used in extreme cases in some areas but it’s often shown as no longer being an acceptable treatment option, as it was often used to merely make it easier for staff to handle patients that may have had treatable issues.
I felt this movie really hit me, as someone who’s been in the mental health system it scares me that abuse and trauma patients were merely thrown into an asylum and were booked in for a treatment which rendered them easier for the staff to “handle” – I feel that it almost treats them like some kind of pet that’s tied to a chain so that the owners only have to feed and clean it. The main character, Babydoll, has multiple realities where she has many different experiences and makes the movie very difficult to keep up with.
Despite this, I feel that it was done very well in the sense that it was a movie with a twist and is very appealing to viewers, constantly keeping them on edge. It uses amazing cinematography techniques, which allow the transitions from one world to another to be seamless and very appealing to the eyes – transitions were done through smoke and room changes (where it goes through one room to another with a black wall in between) and allowed the viewer to set their mind from one place to another very easily. The cinematography was effective as it appealed to the viewers that weren’t so “into” the plot line or characters as her realities were very set for male viewers (fighting and girls) but it appealed to females with fashion used and the videography used.
It’s a movie that I feel a lot of emotion over – I was incredibly excited and constantly on the edge of my seat over the storyline and (as a girl who’s into the guns and fighting) the scenes shown, but I was also disturbed by the truth of how some patients were treated and how Babydoll herself was treated by those around her. I was angry as the lobotomy was booked without her caregiver in the asylum knowing, and I preferred the methods that the caregiver was using which involved group therapy along with sessions for her own confidence and recovery. It was disturbing for me to see the lobotomy happen with everything flashing before her and to have her “life” (her emotional, thinking self) taken away from her. It shows how important thinking is to people and how when we are rendered redundant we no longer are considered humans with rights (shown by the attempted rape of her and continued abuse). Altogether, however, I enjoyed this movie and it’s one that I don’t mind to watch more than once. It affected me a lot and caused me to think while being entranced by the story line at the same time, which I felt was very effective and caused it to be a great movie.