Harmony Korine is returning to his “Kids” roots, quite literally. The director’s latest is the upcoming “Baby Invasion,” billed as a surreal home invasion thriller. The feature, produced through Korine’s multimedia design collective EDGLRD, uses artificial intelligence technology to swap the intruders’ faces with those of babies. “Baby Invasion” is filmed as a first-person shooter and will be debuting at Venice 2024.
The first EDGLRD release, Korine’s divisive “Aggro Dr1ft,” premiered in September 2023 at the festival. It’s since taken an unusual release pattern, with screenings at strip clubs and online premiere via EDGLRD’s website.
The official synopsis for Korine’s new film reads: “‘Baby Invasion’ is a new ultra-realistic, multiplayer FPS game following a group of mercenaries using baby faces as avatars to conceal their identity. Tasked with entering mansions of the rich and powerful and leaving nothing behind, players must explore every rabbit hole before time runs out.” The film includes an original score by Burial.
Korine previously explained to Variety that EDGLRD focuses on “designing entertainment and alternate forms of content.” He added, “It’s live action, with a really strong emphasis on video games and experimenting with the gamification of films.”
The director said that “Baby Invasion” incorporates AI and gaming engines to allow for audiences to “remix” the storyline. (No word yet how that will play out onscreen at Venice, though.) “We’ll create these almost like freakish cartoon filters that these invaders will have, that they’ll wear throughout, but then you could also possibly change them as you go,” Korine said.
Korine will also later be making his animated debut with his long-gestating “The Trap,” which is described “as ‘Oldboy’ set through a hip-hop filter.” The film is “another sun-kissed gangster saga, following an ex-con newly released from prison and deadset on revenge once he learns that his one-time accomplice has become a top-selling rapper,” per a “The Trap” press announcement.
EDGLRD film strategy head Eric Kohn (and former IndieWire editor) told Variety that Korine wanted to venture into unprecedented filmmaking techniques with modern tech, pioneered by EDGLRD. “The film marketplace, especially in the U.S., is very, very narrow,” Kohn said. “If you only consider box office as a metric for success from an exhibition standpoint, you’re cutting off other ways to think outside the box. If you don’t continually reinforce this idea that movies and media can travel and exist across different frameworks, then people default to one mode. Right now, younger audiences don’t want their options limited.”
Additional Venice premieres include Luca Guadagnino’s “Queer,” Todd Phillips’ “Joker: Folie á Deux,” and Pedro Almodóvar’s “The Room Next Door.”
