So this is an indie movie from 1997, but this isn’t a rewatch — I never saw it back then. As far as I know, I never even heard of it. (It was recently released on a Criterion disc, is why I’m watching it now.)

And boy is it a ’90s indie movie. It’s got a real grunge aesthetic to it, dirty and lo-fi; it’s a collage movie full of different media — 35mm film, video, 8mm — that’s kind of thrown together in an impressionistic way.

But the grunge aspect goes beyond just the aesthetic. Wikipedia says of it: “The film explores a broad range of issues including drug abuse, violence, homicide, vandalism, mental illness, poverty, profanity, homophobia, sexual abuse, sexism, racism, suicide, grief, prostitution, and animal cruelty. Korine avoided any romantic notions regarding America, including its poor and mentally disabled.”

And that’s true enough as far as it goes, but the way the movie explores those issues is basically by living in them, and ramping everything up to 11. At first, there’s a kind of bracing reality to the movie — the houses feel like the real, lived-in houses of poor people, there’s an honesty to the characters and actors (Korine apparently sought out non-professionals for roles, with some people who were fresh out of prison and one who he literally found on an episode of Sally Jessy Raphael talking about huffing paint) — but as it goes on, it becomes clear that it’s actually a grotesque exaggeration of reality.

Like, sure, yes, there are lots of depressing, awful, and dispiriting things about small towns and poverty in America, and this portrayal did instantly resonate as real in a meaningful way. But not everything about them is awful, and most of the awful things aren’t this relentlessly awful. Here, everyone’s murdering cats and huffing glue and smashing furniture and being relentlessly awful in a kaleidoscopic way, and it’s all a little much.

Still, there are things in this movie that I’m not going to forget soon, and moments in it that feel as real as anything. It’s too much a provocation for its own good, but… okay, I was going to say that Korine clearly has a lot of talent if he can overcome his edgelord tendencies, but then I discovered that the production company he founded in 2023 is named “EDGLRD” so I guess he’s mostly leaned in since then. Which probably explains why I’ve never heard of him; pity, he’s wasting a real talent.