With a film like Harmony Korine’s Aggro Dr1ft, it is important to take it on its own terms. There is a good chance that many will see it, grow more than a little frustrated with what he is doing, and then reject it without a second thought. While his films have never been for everyone, they are still worth reflecting on as an extension of his interest in American decay. It’s then unfortunate that this is his most uninteresting film to engage with such ideas yet. It must be noted that Korine has repeatedly said he has grown disillusioned with conventional cinema and distanced himself from even referring to this as a movie. So, to take him at what it seems he is trying to do, the biggest question is whether Aggro Dr1ft is the type of work that successfully carves out a new type of visual storytelling. If Korine wants to chart a new path, let’s take that seriously and see where he takes us. After all, there have been plenty of great films that create their own cinematic grammar. Aggro Dr1ft is just not one of them.

The story, for what little it matters, centers on the experience of a troubled assassin named BO (Jordi Mollà) who just want to be a family man as he tells us over and over again in several meandering monologues. Seeming to play with narrative archetypes, he must do one last job before he can live the life he’s always wanted. The target is a demon of a man who spends most of the film humping the air and ruling his corner of this Florida hellscape with cruelty. There are clear elements that recall Korine’s Spring Breakers that are then distorted and made more slippery. There are knife fights, the occasional shootout, and a climactic confrontation, though this is by no means an action film. Instead, it is a more slow musing where BO mostly roams around the world and offers internal musings on violence. One of the biggest actual conversations he has is with Travis Scott’s snake-tongued fighter about betrayal while riding on a boat. Other than that, characters mostly repeat their lines over and over like they are NPCs in a video game. Korine has said this was his intention, but this melding of two entertainment mediums never brings into focus anything about either of them.

What Is Korine Getting at With ‘Aggro Dr1ft?’
Image via GQ

Attempting to take seriously what the film is doing feels increasingly pointless as it doesn’t take itself all that seriously. While there can be plenty of films that run on vibes, this doesn’t have the visual splendor or emotional heft to do so. To continue taking it on its own terms, the use of infrared is interesting though makes everything feel incomplete. Expressions are washed out, settings seem to be subsumed by light, and nothing feels alive. While some of this is very much the point so as to create a sense of nightmarish terror, the closer you look the more empty it is. It isn’t that it’s a problem that the vibes are bad as a discomforting work would at least get you to feel something. What is worse than that is to be banal where every scene feels like a snake eating itself, consuming any potentially intriguing flourishes in its own mundanity. There is no poetry to Korine’s provocation, making it a film that just feels like it is stumbling around in the darkness for something that it never put a thought into what it would be. If this was a test of how well this technology could leave an impact, it was a failure.

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The film is sporadically amusing, but it rarely feels like Korine is in on the joke. It seems to come from a place of genuine creative stagnation and a real desire to explore something new. The trouble is that this exploration is boring rather than bold. What then makes it an unsightly affair is its use of the soul-sucking technology that is AI. Whether it is Korine or the latest Marvel series, there is never a moment where it doesn’t look ugly. This isn’t ugly in a way that could be evocative or memorable. Rather, it is done in a scattershot manner that just feels hollow as it all becomes muddled together. The more you take it in, the more you wonder what it is that is so exciting about it to Korine. He refers to it as just another tool, but it seems to be one that he has little control over how it shapes his film. There is just a persistent randomness to it that comes across not as thrilling or transformative, but as tepid. The layers that go over the faces of characters not only look plain bad, they create an even greater amount of distance from them as all we can see is the artificial rot at the core of Korine’s vision.

‘Aggro Dr1ft’ Is All Bluster and No Boldness
Image via TIFF

The result is a sense of not anger, but disappointment. Rather than come away feeling like you’ve watched something truly daring or inventive, it all feels derivative. It is a film that is too mundane to even get mad at. There are a few minute moments towards the end that feel like it might be getting somewhere in how it juxtaposes proclamations about love with gruesome violence, but that is the only thing from the entire experience that is close to potentially illuminating in some way. This is clearly the film Korine wanted to make and there is a value to pushing the form in new directions. However, rather than feel like a promising new horizon has been uncovered in cinema, this is more dud than discovery. If Korine wanted to make audiences feel as disillusioned with movies as him, this one was certainly the way to do it.

Rating: D

The Big Picture

Harmony Korine’s Aggro Dr1ft is mostly disappointing and falls short of carving out a new type of visual storytelling. The film’s use of new technology feels incomplete and empty rather than thrilling. Aggro Dr1ft is an ugly affair that fails to excite or provoke, and instead feels derivative and mundane.

Aggro Dr1ft had its North American Premiere at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival.