While Donald Trump dreams of the downfall of modern civilization in his legendary Florida estate Mar-a-Lago, Harmony Korine is content with the downfall of Hollywood a few steps away. It was here that the multimedia artist, who had his biggest hit to date with “Spring Breakers” in 2012, founded his eponymous production company EDGLRD last year. But instead of the usual trades one would expect from such a company, Korine has mainly hired AI artists and game designers to realize his dream of the future of filmmaking.
So far, the money has come in mainly from working on commercials and music videos, but the first film was completed just a few months after the company was founded: “Aggro Dr1ft” turned out to be a feature-length music video clip in video game aesthetics at its world premiere at the Venice Film Festival, which, with its gangsta gestures, did not go down well with everyone. In the official FILMSTARTS review (2 stars), Björn Becher even asked the question whether this was even a film? The good thing is that we are asking ourselves this question with the sequel. “Baby Invasion” Finally, after a good 20 minutes, Harmony Korine fades in loud and bold: “This Is Not A Movie”
EDGLRD
The pixelated monster frog that suddenly emerges from the Atlantic Ocean eats a whole bunch of MP bullets before exploding.
But if it's not a film, then what is it? Anyway, it starts with a supposedly authentic interview with a game programmer wearing VR glasses, who reports how her half-finished game “Baby Invasion” was leaked onto the darknet a few years ago. The original idea was that the players' consciousness would merge with the game world so that the world of the online game would be perceived as reality. But now it's the other way round: the players act in the real world, and everything looks like a game that is then streamed online to millions of viewers.
The aim of the game: raid the properties of rich people, steal as much money as possible – and eliminate everyone who has seen your face. And where are the babies from the title? Since none of the participants are identified, an AI ensures that everyone's faces in the live stream are replaced with laughing baby faces. So there are a bunch of GTA-like characters running around with machine guns, slitting their victims' throats – but they have the face of an innocent newborn (like the sun in the Teletubbies, who in real life is of course a young woman and looks like one).
From “Counter Strike” to “Five Nights At Freddy's”
In the first half of the film, a raid is shown from a first-person perspective. On the left-hand side, the stream's live chat is racing through the whole time. In all sorts of languages, by the way, there's a lot of Russian and Chinese, “Baby Invasion” is, after all, a global online phenomenon. But you'd probably have to watch the film at least twice to catch more than a few of the comments in between. After all, you're mainly focused on the “Counterstrike”-like images – although the “own” character, from whose perspective we follow the action, seems more concerned with eating watermelons than looking for prey. The baby face filter is a disturbing, abstract effect that never wears off, even over the 80-minute running time.
A film that looks like a game, that looks like a live stream – and in the end it works above all as a music video for electronic genius Burial, whose track – not inappropriately – is about descending into a rabbit hole. And Harmony Korine has enough humor to keep letting a cute long-eared animal hop through the picture. In the second half, the layout of the stream changes and is more reminiscent of “Five Nights At Freddy's”. Instead of from a first-person perspective, we now watch the torture of the save code from various surveillance cameras, with the game obviously being about discovering and reporting certain “anomalies”. But not only is the number of video images increasing, more and more memes and spam messages (yes, the Nigerian prince also gets his due) are popping up in the picture.
EDGLRD
A huge baby head emerges from the sea – only authentic with the typical EDGLRD horns.
Harmony Korine is well on her way to absolute multimedia overkill, so many game looks and alienation effects are mixed in “Baby Invasion”. No one should hope for a story: There are occasionally speech bubbles like a JRPG (Japanese role-playing game) telling you what to do next. But there is no talking and no guns are fired. Most of the time the protagonists just wander aimlessly through the luxury properties with their baby faces.
But even without any plot, you'll still be completely overwhelmed at the same time, because you can't even begin to follow all the different elements on the screen (let alone in the music). At the same time, you'll certainly not be completely lulled by the monotony that comes with it, but you'll also be somewhat lulled. Like a good rave, you should probably just immerse yourself in the film as much as possible (with or without pharmaceutical support) to enjoy it to the fullest.
You can see it either way
Of course, this is absolutely not suitable for the masses, Harmony Korine's dream of overthrowing Hollywood is still a long way off. But if you get into it, like the author of this review, then it is a really cool experiment – and that's how 4 stars and This conclusion: Harmony Korine continues exactly where he left off with “Aggro Dr1ft”. “Baby Invasion” is the multimedia-experimental edgelord version of a rave made into a film. (We don't recommend illegal drugs, of course, but the director himself would certainly not mind if you quickly sucked on an LSD tablet before going to the cinema).
Or you don't get into it, like my colleague Björn, and then you could put your conclusion about “Aggro Dr1ft” directly under this text: It seems like a video game-style intro to a super-stylish music video – only that it doesn't just last a few seconds, but for 80 minutes. That's fascinating, but also incredibly exhausting.
We saw “Baby Invasion” at the 2024 Venice Film Festival.
