Trash Humpers

Here's a film where a bunch of old people literally hump trash and lampposts, masturbate plants, throw firecrackers as they recite verse, tapdance in a parking lot and smash TVs. There is no story. There is no cinematic beauty to speak of, it's shot on ugly VHS and the artifact shows. It is, at first and possibly second and third glance, a pointless film designed to grate.

But what do we learn about ourselves if we shy away from the confrontation? Watching this, a self that criticizes comes to the fore for whom all of this has no point, he might not be altogether wrong, but let's surprise ourselves, pipe that self down and, not giving him final say in our view, see what else may pop up. Let's engage our own limits of sense.

What grates here seems to be this: old people do unnatural things, babies are dragged behind bicycles, elsewhere a kid hammers a baby's head or a man dressed as a french maid lies murdered in a pool of blood in a kitchen floor with a hammer next to him. Korine himself partly labors under the concept of a media satire, giving us bare sketches without the framework of story or visually dressed of the same violent inanity we consume elsewhere, not much interesting in itself.

The beauty comes once you start to see through that uptight self that can only settle for these things as part of a story. The men only wear masks of old people, the baby is a doll, we plainly know that the man in the french maid costume is playing dead and that is maple syrup on the floor. Unlike other films where the illusion sweeps us into belief, here we know it is all make believe, know this as we watch.

So why be struck by a sense of desolation?

It seems only because we are anxiously prepared to engage a world where the objects (a man lying murdered) are enlivened by their significance, supplying that horizon is what we're made to do. But here plainly they don't, there is no murder, no baby being savaged and only the form, the context of their significance. A man lies naked in the mud, the image carries a sense of something wrong. The assumption is why would he do that if something wasn't wrong? But how uptight is that? He's just a dude told to lie there.

Having peeled through this, what's left?

'Make it, don't fake it'. A dude lying there, faking it and yet not. The vivid reality of this being a play. The playing itself. Not just an ode to destruction, there's no value to that, but the joy of tapdancing in a parking lot. No mistake, it's one of the great films on the illusion of story and the real life beyond that, but you'll have to be still until that nagging old self exhausts his critique and you become the wandering eye finding unexpected happenings among unremarkable America.

It pays off with more evident value in Spring Breakers. There the partying figures pushing against the limits of sense become desirable young girls, the landscape is similarly inversed from drab middle America to alluring Florida, the humping becomes twerking, but the journey is the same marvelous one: finding in the standard perception of something being empty of value, a deeper one which is the capacity for immersion.

There are plenty of films about a staid beauty, like Baraka. This is for those who want to get dirty living it through.

Harmony Korine's Trash Humpers is an ode to cinematic lawlessness and unadulterated mischief. This is the strangest film Korine has ever made, which says a lot seeing as he was the driving force behind Gummo and Julien Donkey-Boy, two of the most unique films of the nineties decade. What makes it so significant in its perplexing obscurity is that it seems to be devoid of any meaning, where with Korine's two previous films you could totally sense there was something there - regardless of how it was presented or how subtle it appeared to be. Trash Humpers seems to have no meaning at all, and feels like Korine's handwritten insult to the unwritten laws of cinema that have threaded the cloth of conventionality.

The film is shot on a low-quality VHS camera and follows three grotesque subhumans around town, who commit several unthinkable atrocities such as vandalism and public indecency, almost obtaining a strange form of pleasure from it. The three characters also wear petrified masks, resembling elderly people, to hide their identity and further make themselves irredeemably ugly. That's what this picture is in a nutshell - "irredeemably ugly" - as well as repulsive, unappealing, beyond offbeat, and a tough sit, even for its seventy-eight minute runtime.

Korine's goal, if he even has any here, seems to be incorporating so much senseless imagery, unique style, lewd acts, shameless and ugly characters, and no cohesion in an attempt to make the most unwatchable film. And don't forget the touch of old school film editing and taping, which we'll get in to. It's one of the first times I'll call a film "unwatchable" not because of poor content but downright bad content committed by the film's characters. The stuff they are doing, humping mailboxes, running aimlessly screaming, breaking public property, and engaging in murder is unwatchable; the film itself is a mildly-amusing, but trivial novelty.

However, I especially enjoyed the film's shot-on-VHS style, making strong note of the choppiness, the messiness, and the long-forgotten imperfections of VHS-quality tapes in a flawless, digitally-driven world. This gives the film a very lowly look to it, almost appearing like a sick home movie that was released to the public due to a criminal mistake. Some have compared it to Jackass, due to the excessive amount of silliness and pride the characters take in reeking havoc. I simply can't, because Jackass made me smile and laugh, while viewing Trash Humpers left me deeply disturbed and somewhat scarred.

And yet, I emerge more positive than I thought I'd e. The tone of the picture is so eerie and unpleasant, and the effect it has on a viewer is somewhat lasting. I can't give it a completely positive review, for the film doesn't feature many attractive qualities other than its cinematography and is burdened by a longer-than-necessary length (forty-five minutes would've been more ideal). However, it earns a recommendation to the most adventurous and curious cinephiles - a group that might still emerge disgusted and somewhat horrified. It's a hard film to watch, and even harder to like, yet that could be Korine's ultimate goal overall.

Directed by: Harmony Korine.

Old people or homeless or psychotic people doing weird crap is funny, and Korrine is one of the only people that can get away with the "no plot/day in the life" kind of movie. But I kept wondering if using actual old people would've made it better or worse.

It's worth watching if you like Harmony Korrine or unsettling people just running around for 90 minutes. People looking for symbolism or depth in this movie are ridiculous.

...but certainly not very good, either.

Believe it or not, there were a few things about this movie that I genuinely liked. I found some of the weird comedy to be hilarious and laughed out loud several times throughout the film. I also thought that Korine did a pretty good job at creating a really dirty and disturbing atmosphere. These elements of both comedy and horror both work to make the movie at least watchable at times, but unfortunately do not save it from being just an overall bad movie.

Perhaps I found it to not be absolutely TERRIBLE only because of how low my expectations were before watching this oddity. I thought it looked like, well, trash-but then I found some highly well done aspects and thought that this movie could possibly be okay, but then it just dragged on and on and on. At just 70 minutes, this is a needlessly long movie that easily could have been half as long and much better.

I would also like to comment on the film's annoying and ugly visual style. It's obvious that it was an experimental, stylistic choice to have the movie shot on crappy looking video, and it does work slightly to the films advantage to make it seem more creepy and trashy, but it just doesn't appeal to me in any way. There's other, more tolerable ways to make your movie look sort of real and dirty.

I would not recommend this movie to most people, but if you're curious enough and a big fan of Harmony Korine's work, I would give it a mild and cautious recommendation.

If I was still 15 years old I would probably have thought of it as daring and provocative and enjoyed it for the very same reason. But since I'm not fifteen anymore thats not good enough.

The first 30 minutes of the film I kind of enjoyed. Weird people doing weird things, well I can go for that, but the movie should have ended after about 30 minutes. There is no plot at all and you don't get to know any of the characters so there is simply nothing to be curious about in the movie. You don't give a s**t about what happens to any of the characters or how the movie will end.

The only thing that left me after having seen the move was a bade taste in my mouth and I couldn't say anything about it besides that the song/saying "Make it make it, make it, don't fake it, make it, make it..." was quite funny.

Personally I think highly of Harmony Korines earlier work and I guess he is just taking the p**s with this movie. If it will be well written of and seen as a work of a genius, I think he will be as surprised as I will be. But if he decides to cut it down to a short movie, than I say go for it.