Since he established his new venture EDGLRD in 2023, Harmony Korine has been banging the drum about traditional cinema not being interesting to him anymore, vowing to instead create art that exists outside traditional parameters. So far this has resulted in his infra-red action movie Aggr0 Dr1ft (bad), a collection of plastic demon masks (yours for the low price of $1500 a pop) and two gallery shows (of paintings inspired by Aggro Dr1ft). While it’s nice that Korine is inspired by the Miami funhouse he’s put together of artists, gamers, “creatives” and mischief makers, it’s a shame that EDGLRD’s output so far has been uniformly underwhelming, devoid of the identity and ideas that made the filmmaker’s more conventional cinema (if Korine could ever have been described as such) engaging even when it was divisive. This losing streak continues with Baby Invasion, a “film” that emulates the style of a first-person shooter game with players’ identities obscured by generated images of baby faces, who carry out home invasions on the wealthy.
It starts off promisingly enough, with an EDGLRD employee explaining that she created the game to try and play with the idea of a game that could induce a hypnotic impact on the player, but it was then leaked in a hacking incident and caused widespread chaos as players couldn’t distinguish reality from fantasy, causing an uptick in violent robberies outside of the virtual world. The film then cuts to a simulated live feed of a Baby Invasion player and his posse as they suit up to make some fast cash, toting guns and smoking blunts. A constantly refreshing chat feed occupies the left half of the screen with the audience commentating on what they’re watching. “Livin tha gta life” one comment reads, which feels like a summation of EDGLRD’s understanding and interest of video games.
To this end, Baby Invasion attempts to simulate a video game while lacking the elements that have made gaming a unique art form, such as compelling narrative, interesting graphics and – most importantly – a satisfying gameplay loop. This is the mechanic which sucks players in for hours at a time, and despite the fact Baby Invasion is only 80 minutes long, it seems to drag because there is endless repetition that extends beyond the generic graphics and even Burial’s thumping, unrelenting score (which involves a lengthy, equally repetitive monologue about rabbits) to the plot (or lack thereof). If Baby Invasion is truly inspired by gaming, it certainly doesn’t understand it, appearing as a pale imitation of the FPS genre rather than something that pushes the envelope or our collective understanding of what a video game – or a film – looks like. Gestures at live streaming culture and the prevalence of surveillance in a world where everyone has a supercomputer in their pocket are all very well, but Korine’s Gen X sensibilities sneak in, coming across more as a PSA about the potential dangers of VR than any sort of chimeric act of creative revolution.
Perhaps Baby Invasion would work better as a VR installation, or a downloadable, playable experience where one gets a better sense of its immersive qualities, because what’s put on the screen here doesn’t compare in novelty or scope to some of the dynamics modern games employ (Hideo Kojima had millions of gamers using their controller to simulate rocking a baby in a synthetic uterus with Death Stranding some five years ago) so it all feels like a hollow provocation based on a dated understanding of how and why people game. At least Aggro Dr1ft, as shallow and misogynistic as it was, had a visual style (even if it wasn’t a good one) and a loose narrative structure. Baby Invasion does away with any attempt at either, settling instead for shot after shot of men toting guns or flipping the bird. We do at least get POV shots of the “lead” character pissing and shitting, which indicates the direction of humour present within team EDGLRD and probably the age demographic most likely to get a kick out of it. There will always be an appetite for Korine’s particular brand of violent fantasy, but despite the volume of the work being produced by EDGLRD, not one part of it is well-executed, interesting only as a vanity project for people with more money than sense rather than for the value of its creative output.
The post Baby Invasion – first-look review appeared first on Little White Lies.
0 Comments