Aggro Dr1ft – first-look review

In August peren­ni­al provo­ca­teur Har­mo­ny Korine announced the for­ma­tion of his new mul­ti-media com­pa­ny ​‘EDGLRD’, described as ​“a design col­lec­tive; it’s a cre­ative fac­to­ry; it makes movies that are not real­ly movies, movies that are clos­er to video games, that some­times are actu­al­ly playable as video games”. One of the more con­tro­ver­sial ele­ments of the project is that Korine intends to use AI to assist in the cre­ation of these new projects – a source of much con­tention for the writ­ers and actors cur­rent­ly strik­ing in Hol­ly­wood. While there’s no con­fir­ma­tion that his first project out of the EDGLRD gate – 80-minute infra-red night­mare Aggro Dr1ft – has been made in this man­ner, it is a bit curi­ous there is no writer credited.

Set in the crim­i­nal under­bel­ly of Mia­mi, the plot – and I use that word very light­ly – fol­lows Bo (Jor­di Mol­là), an assas­sin who com­mands a small group of killers he calls ​“The Chil­dren of Zion”. The crown jew­el of this group is, erm, Zion (Travis Scott) who he refers to as his son. Bo is appar­ent­ly a ded­i­cat­ed fam­i­ly man, with a wife, a daugh­ter and a son, whom he keeps shield­ed from his grue­some pro­fes­sion. His unique skill set has made him rich and enabled him to pro­vide for those he loves (though he seems to spend a lot of time hang­ing out with strip­pers who he holds in con­tempt all the same). ​“I am an assas­sin and a father. I am a killer and a hus­band,” Bo mono­logues. ​“I was born to kill.” To real­ly ham­mer the mes­sage home, a giant CG horned demon watch­es over him as he car­ries out his con­tracts, at times appear­ing to move in sync. But Bo doesn’t real­ly like his job. In fact, once he set­tles some busi­ness, he’s out for good.

It would be fool­ish to deride Aggro Dr1ft for lack of nar­ra­tive, as this is obvi­ous­ly the point. Echo­ing Korine’s (supe­ri­or) Spring Break­ers, Bo says ​“It’s just a game” as he prowls through the streets with a semi-auto­mat­ic, face cov­ered by a bal­a­cla­va. Cer­tain­ly it feels like he’s banked more than a few hours on DOOM and Hot­line Mia­mi, but Korine’s idea of what a video game is (or could poten­tial­ly be) feels lim­it­ed, not reach­ing fur­ther than a third-per­son shoot­er played with the vol­ume turned way up. The visu­al and nar­ra­tive inno­va­tion we see in mod­ern video game design – from Ken­tucky Route Zero and Dis­co Ely­si­um to Elden Ring and even Minecraft – just far out­strips what’s going on here. Aggro Dr1ft is repet­i­tive and didac­tic. It’s all sur­face. There’s no immer­sion, just an onslaught of off­putting visu­als and noise (sev­er­al peo­ple at the Venice screen­ing got earplugs out of their bags or cov­ered their ears) with some misog­y­ny thrown in for good mea­sure. There are only so many times we need to hear ​“Dance bitch dance. Dance for dad­dy” or a rant about how dis­gust­ing strip­pers are before it becomes a waste of everybody’s time.

In the GQ pro­file where he intro­duces EDGLRD, Korine laments his lack of inter­est in cin­e­ma, and his sus­pi­cion that movies are on their way out for good. With his new com­pa­ny he intends to cre­ate films that have inter­ac­tive ele­ments, or that can be altered by the view­er. ​“We’re try­ing to gam­i­fy movies,” he told GQ. But think­ing of games only as shoot-em-ups with scant­i­ly-clad ladies and mas­sive guns is a bit like think­ing of movies only as peri­od dra­mas – it’s very lim­it­ed in scope. Korine’s new ven­ture is cer­tain­ly inter­est­ing, and there’s absolute­ly room with­in cin­e­ma for immer­sive expe­ri­ences and chal­leng­ing the idea of what a film has to be, but this first attempt feels curi­ous­ly out of step; some­thing that might have seemed cut­ting-edge a decade ago.

But it’s hard to know when to take Korine seri­ous­ly. After all, this is the man who brought us peo­ple that mas­tur­bate over trash and cat-mur­der­ing pre-teens. He made Dis­ney teens into gun-tot­ing mur­der­ers. Per­haps Aggro Dr1ft is an elab­o­rate exper­i­ment to see what exact­ly he can get away with. (I’d rather not get into the fact that ​‘EDGLRD’ is almost cer­tain­ly one of the names Elon Musk reject­ed for his Twit­ter rebrand.) In the same GQ pro­file, Korine men­tions that Ter­rence Mal­ick has writ­ten a beau­ti­ful script that he’s asked him to direct, and bold­ly, absurd­ly sug­gests ​“You could look at the Call of Duty trail­er now, and it looks bet­ter than any­thing that Spielberg’s ever done.” Per­haps Aggro Dr1ft is a sin­cere attempt (and fail­ure) to think out­side the box, or it might just be the lat­est provo­ca­tion in a career not lack­ing for them. Either way, it’s just a shame it’s not a more enter­tain­ing one.