In Carlson Young’s directorial feature debut, the inspirations are as bold and impressive as the color palette she uses to drench her production. The Blazing World’s title itself is taken from an early work of proto-science fiction written in 1666 by the English writer Margeret Cavendish. Moving forward in time, the colors and surreal, dreamlike nature of the narrative brings to mind the works of Dario Argento. And then there’s the fairy tale nature of the narrative; an Alice in Wonderland story that borrows liberally from another modern classic work of horror-fantasy called Pan’s Labyrinth. And while not all of it works and she’s obviously operating within constraints of filming during a worldwide pandemic, The Blazing World finds its creator as an intriguing visualist to keep an eye on.

When she was a young child, Margaret (Jose Fink as a child, Carlson Young as an adult) lost her sister in a tragic drowning accident. This opening sequence, filmed with a hazy, dreamlike quality I can only describe as ominous whimsy, feels as perfectly staged as the ballet music Margaret’s mother plays while she does the dishes. A black crow repeatedly slams its head against the wall of the mansion while her parents Tom (Dermot Mulroney) and Alice (Vinessa Shaw) fight and her sister, left unattended, drowns. It builds to this horrific incident and while the parents rush to the dead sister’s side, Margaret sees a dark portal appear behind a creepy man (later named Lained and played by Udo Kier, naturally), beckoning to her.

As her eyes widen in shock and terror, we’re quickly transported to Margaret as an adult, living in an apartment and still struggling with her sister’s death. She reads up on metaphysical books, dreaming of different dimensions and planes of existence, the likes of which her favorite TV host Dr. Cruz discusses in pop-philosophical ways: “...reality is just one gradation of a whole series of existence.” It’s obvious that Margaret is barely holding on and seems close to the precipice of doing something drastic as the phantom of Lained, the man she saw as a child, literally haunts her apartment.

But a phone call from her mother brings her back to the old home because Tom and Alice are in the midst of selling it and want her to go through her belongings before they end up in the trash. As she deals with friends she’s left, including her ex Blake (played by fellow Scream: The TV Series alum John Karna), she also gets pulled into a fantastic world that feels like a distorted representation of real life. And like Alice down the rabbit hole or Ofelia’s journey through knotty trees and pale men, Margaret finds herself on a quest to find and potentially rescue her sister.

Once Margaret fully enters the magical world, The Blazing World takes on the familiar quest structure of fairy tales. There’s keys she must locate, demons she must best and truths she must explore. She’s told by Lained that she must recover three keys held by three demons she must best. And, of course, she must be quick about it because the candle she holds in her hand will eventually go out and all will be lost to the encroaching darkness. In this way, the Pan’s Labyrinth vibes start to materialize...but this is only the tip of the inspiratorial homages. An early scene has Lained sitting at a table in a hall, a goblet filled with glowing and fantastical lightning bugs that he munches on in the same way The Pale Man devoured the fairies.

The production design establishes an intriguing sense of fractured location (and obviously Margaret’s psyche), such as deserts with a solitary house filled with sand and wind-whipped furniture. The masked woman is obviously a representation of her guarded mother who, in the real world, keeps offering Margaret food and water and now offers her insect-covered fruits. And the only water floats above them in a hole in the house’s ceiling. Here, cinematographer Sane F. Kelly (A Scanner Darkly, Boyhood) shoots the action in brisk cuts, giving the characters an erratic sense of movement as they teleport around the small room, as if the intervening footage were missing. And before you know it, we’re crawling out of the desert into a green-fog-filled mansion and into more danger.

The further into the nightmare world she goes, the more The Blazing World suffers from homaging a bit too heavily. Some will even call it outright theft because of how specifically and blatantly Carlson Young’s film wears its inspirations. The aesthetics are beautiful, particularly considering the constraints on the filmmaking, but the the script by Carlson Young and author Pierce Brown is filled with narrative contrivances, heavy-handed and writerly dialogue and on the nose themes.

Her father, for instance, who is obviously an alcoholic, turns into a monstrous man who spouts things such as “your mom didn’t like my fire,” while stoking said fire and slurping his alcohol. Later, Margaret spouts nonsense like, “I’ll stay with you in the body of the whale.” It’s a narrative mess and gorgeously nonsensical, but the sense of whimsical wonder comes through, as vivid as the pops of bright color that contrast against the muted darkness. Considering the limitations of filming in an epidemic, the production design is lush and gorgeous; it’s the kind of production you’d get from someone raised on Alice in Wonderland who also loved Dario Argento’s work and Guillermo del Toro’s filmmaking.

While it’s not completely successful and it pales in comparison to some of the films it clearly homages, there’s enough visual prowess and craft on display that I want to see where Carlson goes from here. If this is the fairy tale beginning of her directorial ambitions, she has a potentially interesting career ahead of her.