Harmony Korine Says Hollywood Is Starting to ‘Crumble Creatively’: ‘Movies Are No Longer the Dominant Art Form’

Harmony Korine doubled down on his thoughts about the current state of the movie industry at a Venice press conference on Saturday, saying that we’re “starting to see Hollywood crumble creatively” because it’s “so locked in on convention.”

“Hollywood needs to encourage — they don’t need to, but they would be smart to — encourage the youth, the kids. Why we’re starting to see Hollywood crumble creatively is because they’re losing a lot of the most creative minds to gaming and to streaming,” he said. “They’re so locked in on convention and then all those kids who are so creative are now just going to find other pathways and go to other places because movies are no longer the dominant art form.”

Korine is on hand to premiere “Baby Invasion,” his latest experimental — and experiential — project after last year’s “Aggro Dr1ft.” He teased that festival audiences will only be getting a “base layer” of the overall experience that that will be offered once the movie comes out.

“When we release the film, there’ll be a way to watch it through your phone, but there’ll be certain codes within the movie that’ll take you to other movies,” he said. “So the film, what you’re seeing, is just a base layer film. There’ll be three or four other sub films.”

The film — in which a group of mercenaries disguised with baby faces invade mansions of the wealth and powerful — has an out-of-competition midnight bowing on the Lido tonight.

Like “Aggro Dr1ft,” “Baby Invasion” is styled like a first-person shooter, and was made using AI and video game engines. While “Aggro Dr1ft” starred Travis Scott (in the rapper’s first major film role), “Baby Invasion” features an original score by producer Burial. In an interview with Variety, Korine described both films as works of “post-cinema.”

“‘Baby Invasion’ is a new ultra-realistic, multiplayer FPS game following a group of mercenaries using baby faces as avatars to conceal their identity,” reads the official synopsis. “Tasked with entering mansions of the rich and powerful and leaving nothing behind, players must explore every rabbit hole before time runs out.”

In 2023, “Aggro Dr1ft,” which was shot entirely in infra-red, featured twerking strippers and demon-like crime lords chanting “dance bitch,” earned a 10-minute standing ovation, one of the longest at the festival. But it also prompted walkouts at both the premiere and press screening.

Korine has been coming to Venice since his early years as a filmmaking, screening his directorial debut, “Gummo,” at the fest in 1997. The film was not well received by critics at first, but later won a special mention from Venice’s FIPRESCI jury. “Spring Breakers” also had its world premiere at Venice in 2012, where it received the Future Film Festival Digital Award.