Baby Invasion

Harmony Korine’s “Baby Invasion” isn’t a movie. It’s an 80-minute psychological torture, a fever-dream fusion of screen life, video games, red rooms, and home invasion. 

If "Spring Breakers" was a neon-lit crime fantasy and "Trash Humpers" a found-footage provocation, this latest effort is something else entirely - a disorienting, aggressively experimental trip that dares to ask: what happens when we stop distinguishing between reality and the digital abyss?

Korine has shed his raw ‘90s aesthetic, embracing a hyper-stylized, tech-driven approach (something he previously explored in "Aggro Dr1ft") that will likely alienate longtime fans. But art is experiment, and experiment he does. 

Shot using real-time rendering technology and ultra-fast graphics cards, “Baby Invasion” distorts and manipulates its own images as they’re captured, making it feel more like a glitched-out video game stream than traditional cinema. 

First-person footage of mansion break-ins, AI-generated face-swaps that turn criminals into devilish Gerber babies, and a mid-movie dance party set to Burial’s pulsating score - this is not storytelling in any conventional sense. It’s a chaotic, fractured reflection of a world where attention spans are shredded, and moral boundaries blur with every refresh.

At its core, “Baby Invasion” functions as a warped commentary on gaming culture’s descent into nihilism. The “film” plays like a livestream of a dark web game - Baby Invaders - where players commit simulated home invasions for digital clout, their identities masked by AI-rendered baby faces. 

A fake chat overlay runs throughout, echoing the desensitized reactions of internet spectators. There’s an eerie implication that the technology at play is more than just a game - that either the players have lost themselves in their violent avatars, or worse, that something (or someone) is using the game to manipulate them into real-world crimes. 

It’s "Straw Dogs" on steroids, only now the siege is broadcast for an audience that barely registers its horror.

While “Baby Invasion” thrives on tension and unpredictability, its relentless chaos and refusal to offer a clear message make it a tough watch. Some scenes drag on too long, others cut away too fast. But the film’s true horror isn’t in the acts of simulated violence - it’s in how much fun the players seem to have. 

No one questions the morality of what they’re doing. No one fights back. The only concern is racking up points. Or so, we think!

Watching “Baby Invasion” isn’t just disorienting - it’s nauseating, hypnotic, and terrifying all at once. This isn’t cinema as we know it, but an immersive descent into the darker corners of the web, where reality and simulation merge into something unrecognizable. 

Harmony Korine doesn’t ask if this future is coming - he suggests it’s already here, and we’ve been playing along without even realizing it.