The Venice audience stayed up late to take drugs and play video games with Harmony Korine.
The midnight premiere of Korine’s latest, Baby Invasion, gave the festival a full dose of the video game/cinema mash-up Korine pioneered with AGGRO DR1FT, which hit Venice last year. And they seemed to like it.
The crowd at the Sala Grande whooped and cheered throughout the 80-minute experimental movie, shot without a script but with layers and layers of CGI and gamer-inspired visuals, as well as a pounding soundtrack from British EDM producer Burial, whom Korine, in the press conference before the movie, claimed he has only met by communicating over Discord and Sony PlayStation.
The plot, to the extent that term can be used, involves an immersive video game called Baby Invasion that has become a real-life phenomenon, a dark web-ish group called Duck Mobb, and lots of home invasions. In our review, The Hollywood Reporter‘s Jordan Mintzer called the film “both mind bending and mind numbing,” noting that “viewers are likely either vibe out or tune out.”
Somewhat like Dziga Vertov’s “Man With A Movie Camera”, from the silent movie era. It’s a laudable intellectual experiment, but with the emphasis on what the camera and editing can capture instead of any narrative thread, the whole thing quickly becomes overwhelming and starts feeling like a chore.