Trash Humpers (2009) Reviews

• an antidote to glo-fi romanticism.

  theloam2010-07-16

  "Make it, don't take it, make it, don't fake it." Anyone who has ever played with a 90's camcorder will be familiar with the colours and textures seen from the beginning in this film. This is not some nostalgic sun drenched glo-fi romanticism however, this s**t is dark. And this s**t sticks. The very first scenes are all just seconds long and in them we are introduced to a number of odd looking characters. They appear to be old but clearly with enough vigour to grind/bang/hump/whatever garbage bins and trash pussy as if they were still in their youthful prime. They certainly seem to have much youthful mischief and we watch in a kind of distanced, disgusted trance as they defecate, smash televisions, let off firecrackers and tap dance. Are we to judge these people? Are they real or are they actors? What will they do next? Will we stick around long enough to find out or will we leave the theatre? Are we laughing with them or at them or worse, are they laughing at us? The introduction given at the start mentioned Lynch, Hitchcock and Jackass. In the future I think you need only mention Korine. Whether he is saying something intelligent or something dumb about American outsider society, whether he is merely holding up a mirror to us wherever we are we can not say he isn't an original, an auteur and a provocateur. Should this be a film for film students to study or should it be one that the weirdo's in class try and make you watch? The themes thrown up (maybe that should be shat out) are certainly interesting but why on Earth would you want to deconstruct what is essentially a bunch of drunken old juvenile delinquents laughing and embracing failure, f**king trees and living their version of the American dream? The most shocking parts of the film are the sounds not the visuals, if anything I found it oddly easy to watch after the initial punches in the eyes, my ears however did just not get accustomed. In one scene a man tells the most offensive 'jokes' to a rapt audience, and there are many clips showing just how noisy America is, even at night. There is a constant buzz of electric lights everywhere, there is the traffic and there are the crickets. Its enough to drive someone insane. This film is beat poetry. This film is soapy pancakes. This film is noise metal. This film is giving a birthday cake to a constipated man sitting on the toilet. This film is a headache. This film is trapping your d**k in your flies.

• "Make it, make it, don't fake it!"

  StevePulaski2013-04-02

  Harmony Korine's Trash Humpers is an ode to cinematic lawlessness and unadulterated mischief. This is the strangest film Korine has ever made, which says a lot seeing as he was the driving force behind Gummo and Julien Donkey-Boy, two of the most unique films of the nineties decade. What makes it so significant in its perplexing obscurity is that it seems to be devoid of any meaning, where with Korine's two previous films you could totally sense there was something there - regardless of how it was presented or how subtle it appeared to be. Trash Humpers seems to have no meaning at all, and feels like Korine's handwritten insult to the unwritten laws of cinema that have threaded the cloth of conventionality. The film is shot on a low-quality VHS camera and follows three grotesque subhumans around town, who commit several unthinkable atrocities such as vandalism and public indecency, almost obtaining a strange form of pleasure from it. The three characters also wear petrified masks, resembling elderly people, to hide their identity and further make themselves irredeemably ugly. That's what this picture is in a nutshell - "irredeemably ugly" - as well as repulsive, unappealing, beyond offbeat, and a tough sit, even for its seventy-eight minute runtime. Korine's goal, if he even has any here, seems to be incorporating so much senseless imagery, unique style, lewd acts, shameless and ugly characters, and no cohesion in an attempt to make the most unwatchable film. And don't forget the touch of old school film editing and taping, which we'll get in to. It's one of the first times I'll call a film "unwatchable" not because of poor content but downright bad content committed by the film's characters. The stuff they are doing, humping mailboxes, running aimlessly screaming, breaking public property, and engaging in murder is unwatchable; the film itself is a mildly-amusing, but trivial novelty. However, I especially enjoyed the film's shot-on-VHS style, making strong note of the choppiness, the messiness, and the long-forgotten imperfections of VHS-quality tapes in a flawless, digitally-driven world. This gives the film a very lowly look to it, almost appearing like a sick home movie that was released to the public due to a criminal mistake. Some have compared it to Jackass, due to the excessive amount of silliness and pride the characters take in reeking havoc. I simply can't, because Jackass made me smile and laugh, while viewing Trash Humpers left me deeply disturbed and somewhat scarred. And yet, I emerge more positive than I thought I'd e. The tone of the picture is so eerie and unpleasant, and the effect it has on a viewer is somewhat lasting. I can't give it a completely positive review, for the film doesn't feature many attractive qualities other than its cinematography and is burdened by a longer-than-necessary length (forty-five minutes would've been more ideal). However, it earns a recommendation to the most adventurous and curious cinephiles - a group that might still emerge disgusted and somewhat horrified. It's a hard film to watch, and even harder to like, yet that could be Korine's ultimate goal overall. Directed by: Harmony Korine.

• Is humping a US mailbox legal?

  Chris Knipp2009-09-30

  Young provocateur filmmaker Harmony Korine, who lives in and grew up in Nashville, has made a film in trashy cheap VHS that evokes the nightmare world of degenerate southern redneck swine. He doesn't exactly say that. He explains when talking of the film that growing up, there were some scary old people who used to peek in windows at night, particularly next door where there was a young girl. Now the underpasses and open lots that he roamed as a youth are full of trash, and looking at trash receptacles one day the idea came to him of people humping them. He couldn't get real old people to play his roles so he gathered together a group of friends earlier this year who wear old person masks in the film. A couple of weeks of warming up and a couple of weeks of wandering around and shooting as the cast improvised and the film, like a sketch made on a whim, was done. It's perhaps an antidote to the more elaborate process involved in Korine's last film, 'Mr. Lonely,' a more straightforward film starring Diego Luna, Samantha Morton, and others. There is no plot, just a series of random scenes. A boy tries and fails to sink a basketball in a hoop. The garbage cans get humped. A screeching old lady rides a small dirt bike around with a baby doll tied dragging behind. The boy takes a hatchet to a doll in a parking lot and tries to chop up its head. A man recites an improvised poem about a nation of trash while one of the masked oldsters sits in a wheelchair and throws out firecrackers at a bunch of balloons. There is some nakedness. There is some nasty talk. There is almost the fear Korine said his wife felt when he played a VHS tape somebody'd given him, that it was going to turn into a snuff film. Korine wanted this to look and feel like found footage, like stuff on a strange videotape found in the trash somewhere. Made by old and demented perverts living a free and aimless life. Some of the images may evoke various sources such as Diane Arbus or Ralph Eugene Meatyard's still photos (strangeness, retardation, aimlessness, Gothic vacuity), but he denies any such connections. Somebody has suggested Korine is treading on the ground of early John Waters. But Waters has a knack for plot; even Korine's structured 'Kids' scenario rambles. And Waters has a great sense of humor. 'Trash Humpers' is ridiculous -- it's a horror movie that's also a comedy -- but there is no wit in it. It's a kind of improvised voyeurism. It does succeed in wandering well outside the mainstream. Its use of a very primitive kind of VHS reminds us as in a far more complex way did David Lynch's beautiful 'Inland Empire' that seeming "found" footage can be deeply evocative and scary. Even 'Blair Witch Project' comes to mind. Not many filmmakers would have staged a series of casually revolting stunts like those encapsulated randomly and (he says) in order of staging that Korine dumps on us here. It's a statement about limits and about freedom. And it's been acknowledged as valid. Even 'Variety' concludes its review of the film with the line: "Across the board, tech credits are appalling -- in a good way." Korine is an odd one (and an articulate interviewee in the NYFF press Q&A) and for festival and film buff audiences he is a force to reckon with. The question is, what's next? Will he go backwards or forwards? Dennis Lim has written an appreciative piece on the film for Cinema Scope. "Can the most regressive work yet by an artist known for arrested development also be a sign of his newfound maturity?" Now there's a bit of interpretive convolution for you. And the statement implied by the question may be true. But still the remaining question is, what's next? Shown as part of the main slate of the New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center 2009. Premiered at Toronto.

• Well, half of the title was accurate

  SteveHistory2010-12-17

  Like watching someone pick at a scab, this movie was painful and pointless from the opening scene. It is hilarious to read glowing reviews from alleged film experts that attempt to praise this piece of garbage. I only made it through half of the movie (and much of that was on fast forward) until I could feel myself getting dumber. I finally had wasted enough time and turned it off. I would LOVE to talk for fifteen minutes with some of the reviewers that praised this movie and see what OTHER cinematic classics they recommend. Granted some of the scenes will stick with me for a long time, but I also saw a dog get hit by a car when I was eleven--that has stuck with me as well. Avoid at all costs unless you have much more spare time to waste than I do.

• "Merda d'artista"

  MoonBog2012-10-21

  I need to string this review out to ten lines (IMDB rules), which will be a struggle. But kind of appropriate after watching a dull, repetitive, derivative attempt to challenge the viewers, which was clearly strung out from about 5 minutes worth of ideas to a tortuous 74 minutes. Trash Humpers is the cinematic equivalent of Piero Manzoni's "Atrist's Sh#t", but not as original. Shocking? No. Provocative? No. It may have been both of these thirty years ago. Remarkable only because so many people, some of them very intelligent, where duped into thinking this is actually worth watching. Anyone for sh#t in a can?