Starring Charlize Theron, Emily Blunt, and Chris Hemsworth. Rated PG. Now playing.

Emily Blunt becomes a sort of twisted sister to Frozen's Elsa in the messy but stunning-looking new fairy tale The Huntsman: Winter's War. Her Freya's frigid touch sends out ice walls with razor-wire-sharp spikes on them, her eyes turn into two glowing glacial orbs when she gets angry, and she even collects an army of kidnapped children to train as her warrior slaves.

Blunt's arch arctic queen—at her best when she fights with her even more evil sister Ravenna (Charlize Theron)—is about the most campy fun you're going to get out of this weird offshoot of the original Snow White and the Huntsman movie. In fact, Snow White, played by Kristen Stewart in the first film, is nowhere to be found here—presumably sent off to an indefinite slumber. Instead, we get a bafflingly A-list cast thrown into a film that can't decide if it wants to be Frozen, Lord of the Rings, or even just a simple prequel or a sequel.

Sporting iffy brogues, Sara (Jessica Chastain) and Eric (Chris Hemsworth) play two of the Huntsmen Freya trains from childhood—and when they fall in love and try to run away, the queen tries to separate them forever. Confusingly, the film then catapults seven years later, to a time that takes place after the first movie, to find Eric searching for the magic mirror with a band of dwarves (Sheridan Smith and others providing welcome comic relief). He's trying to keep the treasure out of Freya's hands.

There's a lot to look at here, no doubt thanks to the fact that director Cedric Nicolas-Troyan was visual-effects supervisor on the first flick. Lush forests come alive with moss-and flower-covered tortoises and snakes; terrifying, fang-toothed goblins swing from trees like apes but have horns like rams, and the magic mirror pours its prophecies out in a cascade of molten gold that takes lifelike shape. Oh, and tight-leather bodices and pants abound.

But beyond the eye candy, remarkably little happens here. And what does go down makes you wonder what audience  The Huntsman could possibly be after. Bloody battlefield corpses, killer martial-arts combat, and random impalings sit oddly with the mushy love story between Eric and Sara, not to mention the dwarves and other fairy-tale trappings. The Hunger Games crowd, by way of Disney princesses, Tolkien fantasy, and Braveheart battle scenes? Only the mirror knows.