THE STORY – “Baby Invasion” is a new ultra-realistic, multiplayer FPS game following a group of mercenaries using baby faces as avatars to conceal their identity. Tasked with entering mansions of the rich and powerful and leaving nothing behind, players must explore every rabbit hole before time runs out. Original score by Burial.
THE CAST – N/A
THE TEAM – Harmony Korine (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 80 Minutes
Harmony Korine is in the middle of a significant makeover. The prolific provocateur is looking for new means of creative exploitation. The once baby-faced auteur who impressed Godard and embraced the cacophony of festival mayhem has returned with a completely different outlook. Last year, at his controversial “Aggro Dr1ft” premiere, Korine infamously claimed that Call of Duty gameplay was better than anything that Steven Spielberg had ever produced. Some may say that Korine has lost his touch with reality, appearing at Q&A’s adorned with EDGLRD-branded masks at major festival premieres.
In the aftermath of “Aggro Dr1ft’s” festival run, Korine exclusively premiered his film at a Los Angeles strip club. If anything, his slew of provocative jargon has led to some of the most baffling reactions in recent memory. Cut forward a few months later, Korine is seen smoking a fat cigar at the Venice press conference room for his latest mind-numbing venture, “Baby Invasion.” The critics in the room listened to the American wunderkind’s words about the dire state of Hollywood. There is some truth to Korine’s sentiments. His latest feature, “Baby Invasion,” attempts to deliver a wholly unique cinematic experience. Its success is anchored by its promising thesis, delivered through interview-oriented exposition.
Right from the start, we learn about a rogue video game titled “Baby Invaders.” Due to the popularity of the fictional game and widespread media coverage from Twitch streamers and unemployed gamers, the product spirals into real-life violence in the aftermath of its debut. The creator describes the game’s base-level premise: a first-person shooter where players adorn an artificially-generated baby mask to conceal their identity. The absurdity of the fictional game coincides with Korine’s contemplations on sensationalism. Korine mixes screen life with erratic gameplay, including iconography from Lewis Carrol’s “Alice in Wonderland.” A majestic AI-generated rabbit randomly appears within the player’s periphery as the game begins to deteriorate with a flurry of glitches and system crashes. Korine breaks the fourth wall by including fleeting title cards that read “This is a game” and “This is reality” to accompany the spirit of his deranged wonderland.
Korine sends the viewer into a post-modernist hellscape that embraces both classic and contemporary video games such as “Space Invaders” and “Grand Theft Auto.” Accompanied by monotone narration reminiscent of Jon Rafman’s “Still-Life (Beta Male),” the vocalized dialogue provides the film’s narrative anchor. Written to personify the synthetic design of a non-playable character, Korine embraces the artifice of his digitized world; unlike “Aggro Dr1ft“, “Baby Invasion” ditches voyeurism for torturous violence.
In pure gamer and Mountain Dew fashion, Korine loves trolling his viewers. “Baby Invasion” lingers within senseless scenes of baby-branded wandering. The apocalyptic setting wears thin as his thematic backbone begins to shatter. The images no longer feel provocative or tantalizing. While the desensitization of the images is part of the form, Korine isn’t interested in going further with his concept. Reiterating similar stimuli from his EDGLRD pantheon, “Baby Invasion” evolves into a staggeringly safe exploitation of video-game media. Whereas the film tries to push the boundaries further with Korine’s recent affiliations towards his EDGLRD aesthetic, “Baby Invasion” ultimately settles for infantilized drivel.
The gratuitousness of Korine’s formula is admirable, albeit questionable. With the implementation of generative artificially intelligent technology as the primary ethical elephant in the room regarding the film’s production, “Baby Invasion” senselessly tumbles down the rabbit hole with a derivative vanguard pastiche. The high-octane delirium undercuts the power of Burial’s rave-like score. As the booming soundtrack effectively shook the floors of the Sale Grande at the Venice Film Festival, the complementary images failed to amount to anything more than pitiful glorification. Perhaps the world’s greatest assassin of cinema might just be Korine himself.
