Jake (Tom Taylor) has dreams of The Gunslinger (Idris Elba), The Man in Black (Matthew McConaughey) and their battle for the fate of The Dark Tower. A couple of lines of text at the beginning of the film inform us that the tower is important and that people say a mind of a child can destroy it. Aside from this, you won’t find much more out from the remaining 90 minutes.

Based on a series of Stephen King novels published between 1982 and 2004 The Dark Tower is meant to be a sweeping fantasy tale across King’s universe. This film feels barely finished and hollow. I actually remained in my seat as it finished stunned by what I had just seen. Despite four credited screen writers and a supposedly vast canvas to draw from the film literally explains nothing. Why does The Man in Black want to destroy the tower? What are gunslingers? Who are the weird henchmen with fake skin?

Aside from the massive pitfall of zero story, little else is good about the film. The special effects are decidedly ropey in places, McConaughey phones it in whilst looking ill, Taylor is wavering on the annoying child actor side of the scales and Elba is completely wasted with a fairly committed performance. And an end of credits sting is also baffling and seemingly pointless.

It actually seems as though they realised how badly it was going halfway through the creation of this film and just thought they would cut their losses, stop and release it anyway.