'Baby Invasion' Review: Harmony Korine Misses The Target With First-Person Shooter Film | Fantastic Fest 2024

Harmony Korine’s second EDGLRD production, Baby Invasion, is a step forward from Aggro Dr1ft — in that at least you can decipher the visuals. The “film” is described as a first-person shooter that blends virtual universes and our reality, but I’m starting to think Korine doesn’t play video games. Baby Invasion continues EDGLRD’s mission of creating anti-movies that Korine dubs “blinx,” and in that regard, he’s skyrocketing toward success. It’s an 80-minute music video that wants to be “The Bling Ring meets Grand Theft Auto meets Hardcore Henry.” Still, even that’s an unfair comparison because Korine wants nothing to do with conventional cinema. He thinks he’s cracked the code on what comes next — and golly, do I hope he’s miserably wrong.

Technically, Baby Invasion is a Screenlife experience. The unfolding footage is livestreamed with a scrolling chat bar and reduced aspect ratio. We watch “players” of an über-realistic virtual reality FPS where you’re supposed to break into wealthy residences and rob them blind. Unfortunately for the developers, their game, Baby Invasion, got leaked onto the Dark Web. Hypnotized users begin to blur digital universes and the game’s universe, meaning lunatics start “playing” Baby Invasion in real life. Presumably, that’s what we see. Or, we think we see. Coherency is not Korine’s motivation — filmic anarchy is his intention.

Harmony Korine's Vision Is Neither Engaging Nor Surreal Enough

Baby Invasion is proudly created with artificial intelligence and video game engines, neither of which impress. Aside from the billions of reasons against featuring AI in motion pictures — which Korine clearly disagrees with — there’s a fakeness that’s never defiantly surreal. Usages are downright ugly, like those social media avatars we toyed around with for five minutes until we realized the apps were stealing our images for A.I. databases. Characters all sport these AI-generated baby faces as per the fake game’s title (as well as the film’s), which makes no compelling industry case for AI technology. Korine relies on software to distort his imagery instead of human artists, glossy and unappealing visuals with the numbing effect of CG novocaine.

As for the video game influences, Korine looks like he’s running Doom DOS engines in parts, GoldenEye on N64 in others, and dabbles in janky PS3 beta shooters elsewhere. These virtual images will interrupt “The Babys” as they pillage mansions for their expensive treasures and murder the owners — but much like Aggro Dr1ft, Korine fails to understand that video games are engaging because you’re in on the action.Baby Invaders wanders away from anything remotely exciting, staying closest to Japanese choice-based dialogue RPGs as conversation bubbles appear on the screen when Mr. Yellow (Team Leader) interrogates a sobbing hostage. It’s Korine’s edge-lordliest tactic — to proclaim he wants to make video game movies but never engage with the thrilling elements of video games. It’s just thugs barging into lavish estates, Mr. Yellow’s juvenile antics as he shits in their toilets and flips off the ocean, and then “minigames” like an infrared bike ride down a driveway or online photo booth opportunity.

The film’s aesthetic is desktop nonsense that makes zero sense in continuity. Choices are singular and only matter for mere seconds. Excruciating lengths are Korine stalling: his black-hooded and horned home invaders inspect their weapons like Call of Duty operators or randomly dance in black-and-white thermal vision. A continuous trance track provided by British electronic musician Burial (aka William Emmanuel Bevan) whispers incoherent narrations from start to finish — about rabbits running free, eternal happiness, and a fire monster — but it’s more about mood than meaning (the only dialogue). Korine’s lax attention to video game details flashes health bars (but we see no action), plants save points (never needed), and even warns the “player” that their computer is about to run out of battery (that’s not how that works; the movie drags on for an eternity longer). While you might giggle at the pill animations that pop like confetti when cocaine appears or the coins above pricy items, it’s all surface-level video game imagery. There’s a poser slightness to everything like someone watched a YouTube complication video and made it their identity.

Korine Once Again Is Doing His Best to be "Edgy"

Image Via Fantastic Fest

That’s the ultimate frustration with Baby Invasion and EDGLRD thus far — there’s nothing edgy about its output. It’s a nonsense garble of sensory vibes that are toothless and unappealing: difference for the sake of being different. As a horror fan who’s seen the nastiest and most offensive home invasion narratives this side of Martyrs and Inside, none of that shock exists. Korine’s sludgy and fractured raver-kid delusion averts the camera from challenging material and refuses to engage beyond Mr. Yellow’s pool partying or scooter explorations. Whatever’s trying to be said about virtual and real-world violence melding into a dreadful conscious state or happiness through material vengeance is ridiculous. Mainly because Korine doesn’t want to engage with his horrors.

Baby Invasion is an upgrade from Aggro Dr1ft, but that’s by merely existing. Korine’s follow-up will see walkouts and standing ovations alike — it’ll probably play in a warehouse someday to an audience of ecstasy-doped crowds sucking on pacifiers and waving glowsticks. The problem is, for now, that it’s playing in movie theaters where it does not belong. Nor does Korine deliver on what’s promised in synopses tied to EDGLRD productions. It’s an 80-minute music video that can be summarized in a few screenshots, wanting to be something rebellious like Ilya Naishuller’s video for Biting Elbows’ “Bad Motherfucker,” but gets lost in its obnoxious Gen-Next sauce. Between picture-in-picture viewers, pop-up ads, reality posing as unreality, and a seconds-long attention span, Baby Invasion is a Reddit thread vision board with little to offer. I’m all for experimental cinema, and there’s a core concept about Baby Invasion that excites for a few minutes, but Korine’s latest won’t be what red-pills me into the EDGLRD camp.