I enjoyed M Dot Strange's prior film, We Are The Strange, so I had been looking forward to this film since he announced he was working on it.
However, this film is just awful. The dialog sounds like it was written by a 4 year old. The voice work is very amateurish (except for the voice of Lord Wor, which was competently done). The visuals are often convoluted and incoherent. And the score is one of most intolerable things ever put to film, with many of the songs consisting of nothing more than a variety of brass instruments all playing random notes at the same time while an annoying voice wails along.
The reason I give this a 2 instead of a 1 is because I can appreciate the amount of work that went into making a film like this, especially since it was a one man show, but as a film standing on its own merits it falls on its face.
The director has mentioned working on a second film in this film's "universe". I really hope he does not, because a bunch of angsty, poorly-animated puppets trudging along to some of the most annoying 'music' ever created does not a good film make. And I haven't even mentioned the storyline yet, which is a mess of forced character interactions, clichés and unintelligible conversations between characters we're never given a good reason to care about.
We Are The Strange was very nice eye candy. Heart String Marionette was both eye and ear garbage. Don't waste your time on this one!