Writer-director Nacho Vigalondo, best known for his Spanish sci-fi thriller Timecrimes (2007), makes his U.S. debut with this knotty, high-concept fantasy about a hard-drinking New Yorker (Anne Hathaway) who gets fired from her job and kicked out by her boyfriend, returns to her hometown to pull herself together, and discovers one night that she’s the animating force behind a giant monster periodically attacking Seoul, South Korea. This premise alone isn’t enough to sustain a whole movie, but Vigalondo knows how to throw a wrench in the works of his story—in this case, the heroine’s old schoolmate (Jason Sudeikis), who silently nurtures a bitter, unrequited love for her and eventually becomes the animating force behind a giant robot that shows up in Seoul to battle the other creature. Hathaway is miscast in a snarky role that Anna Kendrick would have knocked out of the park, but the players are less important here than Vigalondo’s talent for constructing a narrative room full of mirrors. With Dan Stevens and Tim Blake Nelson.