Travis Scott in Concord Korine’s Murderer Flick – The Hollywood Reporter

Of the various administrators to emerge throughout indie cinema’s heyday within the 90s, Concord Korine in all probability stays essentially the most iconoclastic. It’s not an understatement to say that his script for Larry Clark’s Children, which he penned at age 18, is essentially the most typical factor in his entire filmography. Every little thing since — from his irreverent characteristic debut Gummo (which The New York Instances deemed “the worst movie of the yr”) to the Dogme 95-certified Julien Donkey-Boy to his Jackass-like Trash Humpers to the tripped-out Florida-set heist flick Spring Breakers and bizarro Matthew McConaughey car The Seaside Bum — has been an experiment of 1 type or one other.

However the 80-minute murderer film AGGRO DR1FT (all caps, one digit) is one thing else solely. Actually, it’s not likely a film in any respect, however extra like a cross between a film, a online game and a circulate of hallucinatory photographs that might play within the background of a dwell present by rapper Travis Scott — who co-stars right here as a gun-toting, philosophizing killer surrounded by a swarm of twerking booties.

Korine calls this new fashion “gamecore,” which, effectively, why not. It definitely hasn’t been seen earlier than in feature-length type, at the least exterior of a gallery. Premiering in Venice, the place it performed out of competitors, AGGRO DR1FT (what does that even imply?) may enchantment to diehard followers of the director, who’re more than likely in his age group (he’s 50 now). Whether or not or not it crosses over to the players, TikTokkers and technology-obsessed children it appears to cater to is one other matter. Then once more, Korine isn’t attempting to promote film tickets or streaming subscriptions — he’s simply making the artwork he all the time has.

The plot is definitely quite movie-ish, or video game-ish, or each, following a Miami-based hitman named Bo (performed by actor Jordi Mollà, additionally starring in Olmo Schnabel’s Venice-bound Pet Store Days), who must take out an evil large boss (Joshua Tilley) earlier than the boss will get to him first. That’s all there may be to it — and even that plot doesn’t matter in a piece that roughly eschews plot altogether to concentrate on pure visible and sonic sensations, definitely to the detriment of anybody in search of a superb story.

A very powerful factor to notice right here is that AGGRO DR1FT lensed by French cinematographer Arnaud Potier (Galveston), was shot with a course of reworking each picture into trippy infrared footage, like a kaleidoscope of pixelated colours. It’s as in the event you have been watching all of it from the perspective of the Predator, after the Predator took tons of MDMA and washed it down with an enormous cup of sizzurp.

As a lot as Korine mimics the aesthetic of video video games, or extra like video video games as summary video artwork, he additionally appears to be intentionally mocking the gamer mentality right here, with Mollà’s Bo reciting a monotone voiceover the place he says stuff like, “The previous world isn’t any extra” or “I’m a solitary hero” in essentially the most mundane, robotic method potential. In the meantime, Scott exhibits up in some unspecified time in the future because the murderer’s best recruit, sitting on a yacht crammed with gyrating butts and closely armed henchman, repeating the strains: “I do. I sleep. I do. I sleep.” (It’s unsure whether or not he’s attempting to behave like a robotic or that’s simply his appearing.)

Even the killing scenes, for a movie a few killer, are usually not routinely completed. There’s no actual suspense and the motion could be each bland and exaggerated on the identical time. Heads get ripped off and blood drips out like chocolate syrup. Little children in satanic-themed streetwear wield machetes and chant: “We’re the youngsters with satan faces.” The large boss, who appears to be like like he fell off one of many vans in Mad Max: Fury Street, spends more often than not prancing round in his lingerie, dry humping the whole lot in his path.

There are moments when AGGRO DR1FT is sort of hilarious, likely intentionaly so. Korine’s movies have all the time had a mischievous, transgressive model of humor, and you might learn this undertaking as a sly commentary on Miami’s billionaire boys’ membership way of life, with a lot of the film/sport set in seaside mansions and pimped-out sports activities vehicles. You might additionally see it as a mirrored image on how so many Hollywood movies in the present day wind up resembling video video games, and vice-versa, to the purpose that one bleeds into the opposite. Or you might merely see it as Korine — who made the undertaking along with his new collective, EDGLRD — attempting new stuff out.

It’s unlikely the director actually cares what you see or assume, which is why AGGRO DR1FT could be each a liberating viewing expertise and one thing of a chore to take a seat by means of. Both method, it continues to push the sorts of boundaries Korine started to push three many years in the past, when he beginning making films as a misfit teenager again in New York. No matter you do, simply don’t name this new work a “film.”