Venice: Harmony Korine's ‘Baby Invasion' Sparks Mass Walkouts During Screening [Updated]

UPDATE: The reviews are TERRIBLE.

Vulture: “Baby Invasion” Made Me Sick”.
The Telegraph: “This Is The Stupidest Film I’ve Ever Seen”
Variety: “Korine’s Latest Brain-Barf”
THR: “Both Mind-Bending and Mind-Numbing”
Little White Lies: “More Tedious & More Shallow Than Last One”

EARLIER: Much like last year’s “Aggro Dr1ft,” Harmony Korine has landed another one of his EDGLRD movies in an out-of-competition midnight slot at Venice.

Described as an interactive thriller, “Baby Invasion” is a feature about home invaders, shot from a first-person shooter perspective. The footage was created using six body cams (one worn by Korine himself). Oh, and the invaders' faces have been treated with AI technology so that they appear as babies.

On Friday, “Baby Invasion,” was shown for Venice press, where I was told “mass walkouts” occurred during the screening. At the film’s Venice press conference, Korine stated that he’s chosen his new path of “interactive” filmmaking because “we’re starting to see Hollywood crumble creatively” because it’s “so locked in on convention.” (via Variety)

Korine was relentlessly puffing on a cigar, “causing smoke to invade the conference room” and was seated next to a green-masked Gaspar Noé, a close friend of his, as he waxed poetic on Hollywood “losing a lot of the most creative minds to gaming and to streaming.”

They’re so locked in on convention and then all those kids who are so creative are now just going to find other pathways and go to other places because movies are no longer the dominant art form.

Although a cut of “Baby Invasion” was shown, and reviews of it will start popping online in a few hours’ time, Korine confessed that festival audiences will only be getting a “base layer” of the overall experience as he shot over 80 hours of usable footage.

“When we release the film, there’ll be a way to watch it through your phone, but there’ll be certain codes within the movie that’ll take you to other movies,” he said. “So the film, what you’re seeing, is just a base layer film. There’ll be three or four other sub films.”

Korine went as far as to cast real people who did home invasions, in key roles, and much like he did with “Aggro Dr1ft,” didn’t use a traditional script to shoot the film.

Some of the cast were actually people that tried to rob a lot of friends of mine […] Once they were arrested, we cast them and it just added that extra sense of reality.

Some brief footage of “Baby Invasion” is available to watch online.

Korine, known for transgressive, taboo-busting films, helped shape American indie cinema in the ‘90s. Korine’s ubiquitous style, an eschewing of traditional form and narrative, was highly influential and even had Jean-Luc Godard as a major fan.

Some of his earlier films were hallmarks of the ‘90s indie underground scene, I’m thinking particularly of his 1995 script for “Kids,” “Gummo,” and “Julien Donkey-Boy.” His latter-day films, including the wonderful “Spring Breakers,” broke the mold for A24 to break out as a major distributor of arthouse American cinema.