Venice 2023: Korine’s ‘Aggro Dr1ft’ is One of the Stupidest Films Ever
by Alex Billington
September 2, 2023
This is going to attract more attention, unfortunately. I’m well aware that this headline on a review is going to bring in all kinds of people who’ll say this just makes them want to watch the film even more. Nothing I can say will dissuade these people, they’re curious no matter what. That’s how I went in to watch the film – I have to go see it just to see it, even if I’m fully expecting it to be shit. And it is shit. A worthless, shameful, trash film that doesn’t belong at any film festival. But a few of this year’s festivals programmed it anyway, because they couldn’t help thinking some “edgy” EDGLRD shit like this is necessary to show at a festival to be “ahead” of the next trends in cinema. Aggro Dr1ft isn’t going to have any impact on cinema, nor will it become a trend, nor will it even be remembered in a few more years anyway… Now I fully understand why rapper Travis Scott didn’t want to sign off on letting Harmony Korine release this film – he’s ashamed to be a part of it. And I can sympathize with him. It’d be better for everyone if they did just bury this film now.
The latest from director Harmony Korine, Aggro Dr1ft is an 80-minue feature shot entirely in infrared. This means it has a highly colorized, pointlessly obfuscated look to it (see the image above). Why shoot it like this? Why the hell not, I guess, was his thinking. There’s really no point to making a film this way. Did he just get super high and come up with this? I had to watch Aggro Dr1ft because maybe, just maybe, there is some thematic point to using this visual style. There isn’t. It’s miserable and has no function or purpose other than to piss off most people. Half of the auditorium walked out at my screening in Venice. When I was growing up and we got our first camcorder in the 90s, my brother and I would mess around with it and press all of the buttons on the side, turning on filters like “invert“. We’d try to film a few things this way, quickly realizing that it looks so dumb and no one would want to watch more than 30 seconds of any footage shot like this. Decades later, Korine has apparently come up with the “genius” idea to make a whole film like that.
I talked to a woman sitting near me who caught me at the next screening. “That was trash,” I emphatically blurted out. “Beyond trash,” she responded. Yep. I don’t quite understand how Korine could stoop this low and make something this repulsive. He’s made good films! I love both Spring Breakers and The Beach Bum, two films also about very stupid people but they still have some clever philosophical ideas worked into the commentary. The answer, it seems, is not that hard to find. Korine admitted in new interviews at this year’s Locarno Film Festival that he just doesn’t care for most movies anymore. “Watching a lot of this shit, you really feel the algorithms… [Whereas], I’ll see a clip on TikTok that is so inexplicable, so outside the realm of what I even imagine someone creating. Like, I can have an experience with a 30-second clip that goes so far beyond” what movies do for him (via Variety). This is a sign he has lost his damn mind and does not even care to do anything cinematic anymore. This lazy, disgustingly bad movie is the result of his disinterest in cinema – that should be enough to convince most not to waste their time trying to sit through Aggro Dr1ft.
The only defense I’ve heard from some other critics is that it’s all purposefully stupid to act as commentary on and break down the “assassin” genre and hitman tropes. Most of the movie involves two assassins, played by Jordi Mollà and Travis Scott, going around and repeating lines like “I am the greatest assassin in the world” over and over. Better dialogue has been scribbled in crayon by Kindergarteners just learning how to put together words for their first time. This supposed “breakdown” of violent hitmen is really just a vacuous amalgamation of scenes where they talk about violence and being badass and loving their family and making money and having a good time. They drive speedboats around and watch women twerk in hot tubs and show off their guns and swords and body armor or whatever the hell weapons they have. But you can’t actually see any of this, because, again, infrared bullshit. However, unlike with Alien in Spring Breakers, there are no actual characters in this script. It’s empty. And even if it is mocking and making fun of their stupid “I’m cool because violence is my job” ways, that does not make a single second of it entertaining or engaging to watch.
And that’s the greatest problem with this ragingly worthless film… It bothers me to be this negative, but I have to get all this off my chest. Even if you could look past the infrared cinematography (which is insanely hard to considering it’s oppressively vibrant and you can’t actually see anyone’s faces or any details in any shot at any time) there’s not a single shred or ounce or thread of anything worthwhile in the rest of the film. The characters are all immature, idiotic losers. The action isn’t even good. None of them are even talented assassins. The few lines that Travis Scott has are so “are you fucking kidding me?!” bad I’m surprised he hasn’t sued Korine to have himself digitally scrubbed from this film so he can forever not be associated with or connected to it anymore. None of the dancing or twerking or boat scenes are as “fun” to watch as their properly-filmed counterparts in Spring Breakers. Korine should’ve scrapped it and dumped the harddrives into the hot tub. Film festivals should be ashamed they screened it. Yes, it really is “beyond trash” awful.
There will certainly be some folks who will defiantly proclaim that Aggro Dr1ft is some brilliant masterpiece of innovative cinema, or whatever big words they can come up with. They’re being duped. These viewers are so high on the “novelty” of it that they can’t bring themselves to admit it’s as empty as a trash liner freshly unfurled in a trash bin on the side of a street. But let’s be clear – there is no novelty here. This “let’s put an infrared filter on some dumb people doing stupid things” gimmick is something that folks has been playing around with since cheap camcorders hit the market decades ago. Don’t be fooled by the faux “innovation” of Aggro Dr1ft’s existence today. Just because it’s not the same as some cheesy algorithm-created Netflix show doesn’t mean it’s any good. Korine is so cleared bored with cinema, and so obsessed with digital filters and the dim-witted content that fills social media severs, he can’t even see clearly anymore. There is no screen that Aggro Dr1ft belongs on… and no one should be forced to ever suffer through 80 minutes of this drivel.
Alex’s Venice 2023 Rating: 0 out of 10
Follow Alex on Twitter – @firstshowing / Or Letterboxd – @firstshowing
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