Spring Breakers (2013)

Four college girls on spring break (Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Benson and Rachel Korine) find themselves in the company of a heavily armed white-boy rapper/drug dealer who calls himself Alien (James Franco).

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I went in to this movie prepared to hate it. The day-glo aesthetic and dubsetp scoring combined with the easy-target social criticism and stunt casting all just seemed to scream, “Being Controversial 101”. Having recently wasted 83 minutes of my life on the desperately cloying attempts at provocation in Gregg Araki’s The Doom Generation, I was not really keen on potentially wasting another 94 minutes (plus ticket price) on empty shock-cinema. And then I saw this Indiewire Critics Poll... Had I unfairly judged this book by its cover? Only a trip to the local Redbox could let me know for sure.

Obviously I was still a bit resistant at first, but within a few minutes I found myself firmly under the spell of this film’s crazy rhythms. Rather than a music video, it comes off feeling like a classic Nicolas Roeg film. The past, present and future all exist simultaneously in a beautiful, continuous, cinematic fever-dream of sex, violence and music. I’m not sure if it was written that way, but I sure am happy that it was directed and edited that way. Are we in the past? Is that bloody hand in the future? There’s really no use questioning where you are in the time-stream, you just have to go with it and experience this beautifully horrific tour through the dark American psyche. There are images here that will lodge themselves in your brain.

In a year filled with films that dabble in greed, fame, crime and psychopathy, this is easily the best and most chilling. Spring Break Forever!