After a freak bus accident kills all her classmates, surviving high school girl Mitsuko (Reina Triendl) goes round and round a series of alternate realities, in this 2015 Japanese sci-fi/horror flick they should have called Battle Bus Royale.

The opening bus wreck sets up Sion Sono’s Final Destination meets Run Lola Run genre mashup, with the quiet heroine repeatedly thrown into different scenarios that all end in bloodbaths. There are no men in this multiverse, but whatever is trapping Mitsuko in her determinist dystopia puts the male in malevolent force – from the wind that whips off the bus roof and the girls’ skirts (“The wind peaked at my panties!”) to the crotch-chomping crocodile that’s more allegory than alligator.

Where there first appears a method to its graphic, sapphic madness, Tag soon descends into repetitive nonsense and indulgent wackiness, losing its feminist focus over 85 minutes – and not just because it features more upskirt shots than the Daily Sport. Mitsuko remains passive for the duration, and while the point is to stress her embodiment of female powerlessness, it makes for depressing viewing.

As this is one of five films Sono directed in 2015, you cannot fault his work ethic, nor the epic soundtrack by post-rock band Mono. But the clunky exposition, tonal lurches and eye-rolling reveal leave you wishing for a parallel universe where the prolific director was not so easily distracted – particularly by schoolgirls’ underwear.