This retelling of the "Alice" story is continually ambiguous about whether or not Alice is in her real world, or when exactly she crosses over to the "Wonderland". Early in the film, Alice appears to be in her bedroom, when a stuffed rabbit display comes to life and breaks out of its cage. Alice follows it across a large field and through a desk, which leads to a cavern with a long elevator ride. "Wonderland" itself is a strange mix of a household_like area with very little concern for logical space or size. When the movie ends, it is ambiguous whether everything that happened to Alice was indeed real, or if she is still dreaming.
The visuals are often described as grotesque, perverse, or disturbing, but overall not repulsive. Prominent are a white rabbit constantly reaching inside his own chest and pulling out sawdust, and various morbidly animated skulls and slabs of raw meat products. Many of the animated characters are made of surprising household objects, for example the caterpillar is made out of a stocking and two creepy glass eyes. Scissors and knives are also recurring themes.
The film also features a jarring device in which a close-up of Alice's lips appears to deliver narrative sentences like "said the White Rabbit". This occurs constantly throughout the picture and is considered by many both extremely irritating and indicative of some of Svankmajer's weaker didactic tendencies.
Filmed in a decaying Wonderland that is filled with creatures that are as scary as they are surreal, the movie turns Carroll’s novel even more explicitly into an examination of a young girl’s psyche.
The first moments of the film reveal the novel’s opening, in which Alice lounges on a riverbank with her bookish sister, as an imaginary construct, and the rest of the story’s adventures take on an acute sadness as a result.
Alice is nearly free of dialogue, its American release represents one of the few instances in which dubbing doesn’t noticeably detract from the viewing experience.
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