Baby Invasion

Doubling down on everything irritating found in AGGRO DR1FT, Baby Invasion soon becomes numbingly repetitive and could only have come from the clinically insane mind of Harmony Korine. Despite all the creative ideas and its attempt to further push the boundaries with his recent affiliations towards his EDGLRD aesthetic, the film ultimately settles for infantilised drivel, horrific sound design, nausea-inducing visuals and generative AI monstrosities. Lacking any form of cinematic style, Baby Invasion may attempt to simulate a video game but it fails to include the elements that have made gaming such a unique art form; be it a compelling narrative or even a satisfying gameplay loop. It's one thing to play a video game... but sitting down and watching one, especially as bad as this, is frankly quite boring. It's clear that Korine wants nothing to do with conventional cinema anymore, thriving on mere gimmicks, he thinks he's cracked the code on what comes next, but I sincerely hope he's miserably wrong.

It's a piece of art if you're seeking a high dose of emotions. Harmony Korine - you're a genius! This is something most of us have probably never seen before. It's a completely new approach to cinema, not meant for posers.

I hope you release more films like this. After Aggro Dr1ft, I was worried you'd try to force yourself in that direction and keep creating within that genre - but this is nothing like that. This is something totally unique. The power of emotions unleashed with every scene, the tension, the musical layer - it's simply a masterpiece. This is what I look for in art - and how I understand art.

It's surprising from the director of Spring Breakers to make something so different, but it's bursting with flaws despite all the creative ideas, it seems the director knew this but said 'Make it anyway!'

While the core concept and some individual sequences are enjoyable, the pacing suffers significantly from this unnecessary elongation the runtime is padded with excessively long, lingering shots that are boring, serve no narrative purpose and feel like filler just to make the footage movie length.

Or scenes that pause to flaunt their lavish effects where the movie wants to use effects just to use them.

Drags on but has a fun premise and execution overall.

It is a technology demonstration, except the artist has zero proficiency in the technology they are attempting to showcase.

Baby Invasion is full frame of overlays and filters. Visual effects using artificial intelligence, video game engines, infrared depth and motion sensing, and datamoshing to name a few. Though the filmmaker seems satisfied with merely achieving the effect with little care for the end result.

It does have a very small amount of interesting naïve art. Though not always, you'll know when it's being displayed because they were smart enough to remove the simulated livestream chatroom overlay that otherwise takes up half of the frame throughout the 79 minute runtime.

I did enjoy the soundtrack which I felt accompanied the imagery well. The original score by Burial really carries the film, allowing it a chance that anyone would ever view it to the end.

Some people would like you to believe that this is "Pushing Boundaries" or "breaking the mold". I don't know who they're trying to convince but any normal person will watch this and within 30 seconds realize this is garbage. There's a reason this isn't a "cinematic style" is simply because there is nothing cinematic about it. Nothing. I'm not sure what Korine wanted to achieve with this. Perhaps make it so bad that people will walk about it, making more and more people wanting to see what the "big deal"? Hoping to make a cult classic - one of those "it's so bad it's good" movies. At least those movies are entertaining. This is painful to watch, and simply cringe. If anyone really wants to see what the "big deal" is, simply watch the trailer. Garbage is garbage, no matter how much you want to put an artistic spin on it.