'The Bad Batch' reveals a muddled but visually striking desert dystopia

The title of "The Bad Batch," Ana Lily Amirpour's arid and feverish new movie, refers to the assorted undesirables who have been exiled by the U.S. government to a vast and barely habitable stretch of Texas wasteland. Under a merciless sun, a sullen new arrival named Arlen (the British actress Suki Waterhouse) is promptly captured by a gang of iron-pumping cannibals who tie her up, drug her and divest her of an arm and a leg. Arlen escapes, barely, and finds her way to a makeshift town of losers and drifters, noodle carts and shipping containers laughably known as Comfort. Ruled over by a self-styled messiah/drug dealer/harem-keeper known as the Dream (Keanu Reeves), Comfort is a slight improvement on Arlen's previous situation. But it's still no country for old men or young women -- or, for that matter, a little girl named Honey (Jayda Fink) and her bunny rabbit, both token symbols of innocence in this dust-choked dystopia.