I'd like to think there's something positive to say about almost every movie out there. Even the bad ones. Sometimes, just one or two things is all they've got going for them.

That's certainly the case with Karmadonna, a film so juvenile, unengaging, and poorly directed, you'd think it was a first year film school project. The kind of thing you do when you're just starting out, simply to get all the bad impulses out of the way. Because that's mostly what Karmadonna is composed of: bad impulses and puerile writing.

But first, the good things. The initial concept is a good one. An aging, cynical, and selfish woman on the verge of motherhood receives a phone call from a seemingly all-powerful entity, who proclaims itself a god. It has chosen her to act as the vessel of revenge, and sends her on a killing spree of the worst people imaginable. At least in Serbia.

Second, our lead actress, Jelena Djokic, is great. She does everything in her power to salvage the insipid screenplay. It doesn't work, but she tries, and more power to her for that.

That's it. That is all the good I can muster to say about Karmadonna. Everything else, from the awful dialog to the over-directed set pieces to the awful cinematography, is a waste of time. This is a film that would be a chore to watch even as a short film, let alone as something pushing the two-hour mark.

Director and writer Aleksandar Radivojevic shoots every scene like it was the climax to something, wildly spinning the camera in every direction he can, using Dutch angles to provide us with enough nose acting to last a century. He has no concept for pacing or buildup. There is no sense that any of these scenes were thought out beyond the initial "wouldn't be cool if" premise.

But a film with wild styling and half-baked ideas needs a vision. It needs panache. Something that provides balance to the shortcomings. Radivojevic has none of that. Instead, Karmadonna plays like how you'd imagine a film school project aping Sam Raimi would look like.

The dull screenplay lifts bits and pieces from games and literature, most notably Hotline Miami and I, Lucifer, both which are edgelord-material on their own, but at least make a point in their absurdity. Around the halfway point, Karmadonna slows down for an extended series of scenes where characters proclaim Radivojevic's haphazard worldview. It is part boomerism, part a teenager's first foray into philosophy. Whatever the result, it goes on for a half hour too long.

By the time we get to the gore, which the film keeps teasing through inoffensive and dated kills, it's way too late to salvage anything. It would take a master of genre to turn the ship around at this point, and Radivojevic simply isn't up to the task. So, for another half hour, we're punished by bad effects and uninteresting sequences of poorly choreographed extras running into one another.

Not every film will be a new Evil Dead. Most won't even be a new Army of Darkness. But even the worst films usually have a point of view. A singular vision they really want to put out there. During the Q&A after the screening, Radivojevic claimed his film was "about everything."

That's the problem.