“Baby Invasion” Review: Harmony Korine's Latest, Shocking Film

Iconoclastic author Harmony Korine delivers another outlandish feat of movie-gamer madness with Invasion of childrenwhich follows last year's AGRGO DR1FT down a similar rabbit hole (this time involving a whole lot of digital rabbits) where violence, chaos, masks, and McMansions collide under the Florida sun.

While DR1FT It was a film about shameless killers whose images were elaborated and re-elaborated until they seemed like drugged nightmares, Invasion applies a different aesthetic but a comparable narrative approach, breaking down the barriers between cinema and video games until we no longer know if we're watching one or the other. And in case you didn't realize, at one point titles appear on the screen that say: “This is not a movie. This is a game. This is real life. There is no real life.” All clear now?

Anyone approaching Korine's latest film expecting to see an adventure about kids taking over Miami Beach should be warned: There are no real kids here, but rather a gang of heavily armed thieves using digital kid masks to disguise themselves. The problem is, they're playing a video game at the same time, so their real crimes earn them bonus points in the virtual world and money in the real world.

If this is still confusing, don't worry. Korine couldn't care less whether the viewer understands everything. What matters is the immersive experience. Invasion of children offers. There are layers upon layers of visuals: a live-streamed commentary track, CGI bunnies and all sorts of crazy player icons, a series of Japanese texts. The visuals are supported by highly atmospheric sound design and a heart-racing score by British EDM producer Burial.

It's fascinating to watch, let's say, for the first 10 minutes, but as DR1FT the film quickly becomes mind-numbingly repetitive. It's one thing to play a video game, which is more or less an active experience, but to sit and watch one is altogether more passive and, frankly, rather boring. That said, millions of people now watch other people play video games on Twitch or YouTube, so Korine clearly has a point.

Although there is no real script Invasion of childrenThe film can be broken down into three sequences, capped off by an interview with a game designer who explains how her latest creation, called Baby Invasion or Baby Invaders, became a real-life phenomenon. From there, we follow a gang of gamers, part of a larger online group called Duck Mobb, who are loaded up and armed with all sorts of assault rifles, before driving off in a scary white van to wreak havoc.

The rest of the film consists of two long home invasion scenes, both set in sprawling Florida mansions that the invaders gradually transform into billion-dollar bloodbaths. Not that the action is overtly violent: there are plenty of guns brandished but no shots fired, and the child-masked robbers spend about as much time scaring the homeowners and stealing their money as they do loitering around, taking selfies and eating platters of fresh fruit.

There's an underlying commentary here about the poor stealing from the ultra-rich, which was already a theme in Korine's book. spring breakers and this time it gets a lot more blatant. The second robbery, which takes place in a gigantic mega-mansion complete with an indoor basketball court, a colossal outdoor pool (the largest private one in South Florida, I looked it up), and one of the vulgarest interior design schemes in recent memory, almost seems justified when you see the enormous amount of wealth and vanity on display.

Korine has a lot of fun having his band of merry players destroy these spaces, leaving blood-soaked bodies on the ground as they rack up points online. But their fun isn't necessarily compelling, and what feels fresh and new at first doesn't hold up to the length of a feature film. Invasion of children It's ultimately less a game, or a movie, or nothing, or both, and more an event of sorts, which Korine orchestrates with his usual visual flair.

Some of the images in the film are downright mesmerizing. But accumulated over 80 minutes, they tend to lose their permanence. Most of them Invasion of children It was filmed with what appear to be body cams, which offer a fisheye view of the chaos. Other shots were taken with home surveillance cameras, which, by the way: why don't any of these Florida billionaires have decent security systems or panic rooms?

There's so much going on on the screen that it's impossible to take in every detail, let alone follow a voiceover that says random things like, “The rabbit knew he was blessed” and “He remembered what it was like to be one with the wind.” Is it all poetry or just a show? Again, Invasion of children It's a bit of both, and viewers are likely to be either distracted by it or not watch it.