This movie is clearly a labor of love, and the imaginative cinematography as well as Victorian-era inspired dialogue are its strongest points. The music is also quite fitting.

Unfortunately, other flaws keep it from becoming something like an indie classic: the pace is plodding, despite changes of scenery it still has a strong "stagey" feel, and the plot twist is easy to foretell much sooner than the reveal.

The story is actually quite simple, but may be harder to follow if one does not have some background knowledge to notice the many historical references in the movie. So here is a little primer:

Lewis Carroll, the author of Alice in Wonderland, was the nom de plume of Charles Dodgson, a mathematician and cleric. He enjoyed the then-new art from of photography, and would often take pictures of young children, including nude photographs. There are some allegations, not resolved either way, that he may have been a pedophile. He suffered from a stammer which made it difficult for him to speak in public, but he had a voluminous exchange in letters with others, including many of his ''child-friends'' in which he posed a number of riddles. His 'Alice in Wonderland' may have been based on an actual child acquaintance, Alice Liddell.

Nicephore Niepce is usually credited as the inventor of photography. He was French and died right around Dodgson's birth, so the two could never have met in real life.

Franz Kafka is regarded as one of the most important novelists of the 20th century, and his most famous story, 'The Metamorphosis', in which a man wakes up one day to discover that he has become a gigantic insect, is briefly alluded to in the movie. The protagonists in his stories are often faced with bizarre, logic-defying situations for which his name has become an eponym.

People who like art-house movies with fantastic themes may enjoy this movie, but others will probably find it too hard to relate to.

This movie was listed as horror, the slow plodding plot had me checking just how much movie was left that I had to suffer through. That was the only horror I had watching this. The characters were over acted and although the costumes were interesting (the only reason I gave it a star at all),it couldn't make up for the broken slow plot. I'm still wondering just what it is I watched.

I give stars for costuming and an attempt at artistic cinematography. The pacing left something to be desired and the constant breaking of the third wall to narrate what was happening only served to slow the plot further. I could tell most of the actors were more acclimated to live theater acting because the overacting and over the top expressions were distracting. Perhaps this was a directional choice, but it was a poor one. While I loved the steampunk feel of the costumes and set, that was about the only thing I enjoyed about it. Everything else made this film hard to follow and even harder to continue watching to the end. I feel like I need to watch again to try to understand what's happening, but I don't think I could stand to suffer through it again. It was a fine attempt at an artistic style of film, but I feel it could have been much better with quicker pacing, less break away monologues, a captivating musical score, and all around better directing.