The Thousands

Trash Humpers is about a group of trash humpers. Depending on your inclination, Harmony Korine’s new flick is either about much, much more – or nothing at all.

A group of ‘senior citizens’ (Korine and Co. in laughably bad old people masks) hump trash (and trees/plants), get drunk, destroy stuff, and mouth off to each other with interchangeable brawl-baiting and aggressive porno talk ("bitch" and "motherfucker" abound).

An exercise in bleak abjection, enough stylistic choices have been made herein to imply this is NOT just a random, unrelenting prank. Influences could include: Leatherface and his family; Paul McCarthy‘s fluid-laden, sexed-up work; the juvenile destruction of Jackass; and William Eggleston‘s Southern eccentrics.

But these are all tenuous at best. Shot entirely on video, Trash Humpers feels like a grainy, creepy home video you bought by chance at the Salvo’s. Who are these people? Why are they doing this?

An act of pure creation and uncompromising vision, Trash Humpers is a formidable presence; a cryptic, funny, fully-realized, self-contained panorama of bile, hyper-sexualised nonsense, and unrepentant nihilism. Or a big glob of nonsense. Korine probably doesn’t care which you prefer.