Trash Humpers

Four yutes, wearing what look like Grandpa masks from the original TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE, film themselves going around dry humping trash cans and mailboxes and trees and concrete walls and refrigerators and dumpsters and anything else they can clamp onto. They also dance around and destroy stuff. At 30 minutes this would have been hilarious, but at 78 it gets old. Especially the scenes where everybody is just standing around doing nothing. There is no plot or story, the entire thing is made to look like, I guess found footage, that was filmed on an old VHS camera.

I like the concept and I'm a fan of Harmony, but TRASH HUMPERS comes off as if he's trying too hard to be different. But at least it's better than MORDUM which was pretty much the same film except that it went waaaaaaay over the top and made me want to commit suicide...by exploding every nuclear bomb on the planet at once.

Plus points for being different, minus points for not being that original at being different.

I've liked all of Korine's previous films, so I was looking forward to his fourth feature. I've concluded that if you're fond of Korine's work, you'll be more inclined to watch and admire this film. It was shot and edited on VHS equipment, and it's funny at times to see the "auto tracking" message and the accompanying video noise. But the film would have worked just as well on digital video (which is what Korine used in julien donkey-boy), so the VHS is ultimately a gimmick. The concept of the film (Korine said that the film is supposed to "be" like a lost VHS tape that has been discovered, and it has all this strange, random, unexplainable footage on it) is actually more intriguing than the actual film itself. In that respect, it's similar to some of Andy Warhol's work, like Sleep and Empire, except not as long as those 2 films. Trash Humpers is a mere 78 minutes compared to the multi-hour endurance tests of Empire and Sleep.

I think that Korine was just trying to shock all of us, but I wasn't really shocked by this film. Having seen Gummo, julien donkey-boy, and Mister Lonely, I am immune by Korine's shock tactics. I found Trash Humpers funny and kind of sad in a way. If Korine was trying to go "punk" and shock us, it doesn't work. As a strange, surreal film, Trash Humpers works well at times. The main characters have ugly, deranged looking old people's masks on, and they look like Grandpa from the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

There are 2 shorts on the DVD. Blood in Havana is good (showing one of the Trash Humper characters wandering around Havana, Cuba), but Mac and Plac is way overlong at 27 minutes. It's essentially a short film of 2 characters in Trash Humpers who play "cojoned" twins, and the film seems to consist of outtakes from the film itself, as some of the material in the short is also in the main feature. Some of it is OK, but Korine put the best parts of the scene in the main movie itself, so it just comes across as a waste of time and not a seperate film at all.

Trash Humpers isn't bad for what it is, but I'm glad I didn't pay 12 dollars to see it in a theater. After the maturity Korine showed in his previous movie Mister Lonely, I wonder why he felt he had to go "punk" in his fourth feature. I'll have to ask him that one day.

I was really excited for this movie when I heard rumors about it coming out. Then I watched it. It just fell flat. Not utterly terrible, but just not that great. There are the expected funny/surreal moments, but not enough to improve the overall mediocrity of this flick.

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