It is Snyder's first film based on an original concept. As she collects items she needs to escape, she enters a series of fantasy worlds where she and her fellow inmates are strong, experienced warriors. A young woman named Babydoll accidentally shoots her sister in a struggle with their abusive stepfather. Their stepfather had murdered their mother and discovered that she left everything to her daughters in her will.
So he commits Babydoll to a hospital for the mentally insane and bribes orderly Blue Jones to forge psychiatrist Vera Gorski's signature to have Babydoll lobotomized. Babydoll slips into a fantasy world in which the asylum is a brothel owned by mobster Blue and she and the other patients are sex slaves. Gorski is their dance instructor. Blue intends to sell Babydoll's virginity to the High Roller; in reality, the doctor scheduled to perform her lobotomy.
Babydoll performs an erotic dance during which she fantasizes she is in feudal Japan , meeting the Wise Man. The Wise Man tells her that she needs four items to escape: a map, fire, a knife and a key. There is a fifth unrevealed item that only she can find which requires "a deep sacrifice" and will bring a "perfect victory". She fights three samurai giants, then finds herself back in the brothel.
Babydoll convinces the four other girls to join her in escaping. She dances as a distraction while the others obtain the necessary tools. During her dances, she fantasizes about adventures that mirror the escape efforts, such as infiltrating a bunker protected by World War I German soldiers to gain a map as Sweet Pea copies a map of the building in Blue's office , storming an Orc -infested castle to retrieve fire crystals as Amber steals a lighter from the mayor , and fighting robotic guards on a train to disarm a bomb as Sweet Pea steals a kitchen knife from the Cook.
In the last fantasy, Rocket sacrifices herself, paralleled by the Cook fatally stabbing Rocket as she protects her sister. Blue overhears Blondie relaying Babydoll's plan to Gorski. He fatally shoots Amber and Blondie. Babydoll stabs him with the kitchen knife and steals his master key, then starts a fire to distract the orderlies as they seek an escape.
