Trash Humpers (2009)

Anti-Cinema Cinema - Trash Humpers review by griggs

Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. That phrase kept circling in my head while watching Trash Humpers, Harmony Korine’s parade of masked misfits smashing televisions, mumbling non-sequiturs, and, yes, humping trash. Shot on battered VHS and stitched together like found footage from a basement no one wanted to enter, it’s less a film than an endurance exercise.

Korine clearly wants to provoke, and there’s a perverse energy to the whole thing. The grainy texture, the amateur theatrics, the grotesque ritual of it all—it dares you to look away. But after a while, the provocation curdles into repetition. What initially feels shocking soon turns monotonous, like a joke stretched far beyond its punchline.

There are flickers of something interesting in its DIY nihilism, but they’re swallowed by the noise. Trash Humpers is defiantly anti-cinema, which might thrill some and exhaust others. For me, it fell squarely in the latter camp: a reminder that experimentation isn’t always the same thing as invention.