After a contentious fall-festival run where people either had to declare Aggro Dr1ft the future of cinema or an abject embarrassment––I propose it’s sufficient to think “this looks neat” and find yourself chortling across 80 fleet-enough minutes––Korine’s EDGLRD is migrating from initial public venues (L.A. strip clubs) to a proper theatrical release: 17 coast-to-coast theaters between May 10 and 16. With that set, there’s a new trailer that gives greater sense of the visual onslaught, narrative scope, and humor.
Safe to say if this amuses, you’ll get something from the film at large. As Rory O’Connor said from his review out of Venice, “Korine has named this new aesthetic ‘gamecore,’ which seems pretty apt. Even the most casual player will recognize the rhythms and visual cues here: the actors move and converse like NPCs, repeating phrases and gestures, and moving around with all the personality of an avatar in Second Life. A satanic demon is forever appearing on the horizon. It’s like you’ve logged into somebody’s unhinged Twitch stream. For all it lacks in other areas, however, it mostly compensates in the sheer audacity of its ideas. The film’s aesthetic is also genuinely new: shot in Miami (like much of his recent output), the city hums with the infrared lens’ neon hues. The AI adds a dynamic second skin to the actors that recalls the early images of Google’s Deep Dream. In the moments when everything clicks, it creates something thrillingly novel.”
Watch the preview below: