Trash Humpers
Bonus Only Online Review: Trash Humpers
Director: Harmony Korine.
Have you seen Eraserhead? Did you like it? Did you “get it”? Did you “get” that there was something in there? Something that you may not be able to articulate with words, and in fact probably transcends language, but is none the less real and powerful and visceral and difficult.
Did you like being unsettled in that way? Or if you didn’t like it, did you at least appreciate that a film was able to make you feel that way? If you’re that sort of person, you’ll probably enjoy - no enjoy is the wrong word entirely - appreciate is much better, Harmony Korine’s VHS nightmare-scape, Trash Humpers.
It reads like Korine has unearthed some worn home movies shot in the early 1990s by people who live on the Eraserhead asteroid, and then cut and pasted them using a couple of VCRs (this is actually how Korine edited the film) into an hour and a half of home-cooked terrifying destruction and screams.
There is no “narrative”. There is nothing “relatable” about these characters (unless you’re an octogenarian with a penchant for giving trees blow-jobs or defecating in driveways) and as such you shouldn’t look for these things in this film.
This is an exercise in amorality. Non-stop sinning with no consequences. This is beyond hedonism. And it’s riveting. I sat wide-eyed for the entirety of this film, waiting for retribution that would never come. This was what made Trash Humpers shocking.
This film will appeal to fans of Korine’s earlier works (Gummo, Julian Donkey Boy) and to people who are prepared to leave everything their years of film-going has told them to want in a film, at the door.
Joseph Harper