Although the 3D fad has grown irrelevant outside of James Cameron’s Avatar films, the desire for premium format releases has resulted in the newfound appreciation of IMAX. With its spacious volume and absorbing surround sound, theaters with IMAX projections have become essential for the distribution of “event films.” Recent hits like Oppenheimer, Top Gun: Maverick, and Dune: Part Two each received a healthy portion of their total global gross from these exclusive screenings. The summer movie season has generally involved multiple films in contention to debut on these select IMAX screens, but the rest of the calendar year has opened up to less traditional releases, which have taken advantage of its advanced capabilities.
A24 is no longer the independent studio that was only favored by cinephiles and hipsters, but a brand with merchandising lines and a devoted fanbase. Although the entertainment company has a healthy calendar of new releases lined up, it’s also experimented in the revival of older titles, which have screened in IMAX for the first time. A majority of these re-release events make sense; genre-based films like Everything Everywhere All At Once, The Witch, Uncut Gems, and Midsommar would all benefit from being as big and loud as possible. The same couldn’t necessarily be said for Spring Breakers, the controversial crime thriller from an equally polarizing filmmaker, Harmony Korine.
Spring Breakers was an A24 release long before that meant anything; prior to the studio’s dominance in award season, it generally served as the home of oddball genre films, such as Denis Villeneuve’s doppelganger thriller Enemy or Jonathan Glazer’s trippy body horror mystery Under the Skin. Korine had never been a filmmaker who received anything close to a wide release within the first few decades of his career, but his aggressive refusal to conform to traditional standards earned him the respect of A-list talent, willing to take a chance on his projects. As a result, Spring Breakers became an early example of what A24 was capable of; recognizable faces could work with auteur directors, and make films that were either brilliant or repellent based on the cultural awareness of their viewers.
Aggressive marketing may have pushed Spring Breakers to be a word-of-mouth hit, as did the peculiar nature of its premise. In what could perhaps be described as Michael Mann’s take on a Girls Gone Wild video, Spring Breakers is the story of four college students that embark on a spree of crimes, substance abuse, and violence over the course of their week off from classes. In a successful piece of stunt casting, Korine gave the lead roles to the teen idols Selena Gomez, Vanessa Hudgens, and Ashley Benson, with the fourth part handed to his wife, Rachel Korine.
Spring Breakers is in conversation with the bleak, depraved experimental films like Gummo and Trash Humpers, which solidified Korine as the rare filmmaker interested in the stories of society’s social outcasts. Yet, the freaks in Spring Breakers aren’t characters that lack resources, but rather those who are too incompetent to take advantage of their privilege. The four leading ladies are so obsessed with the euphoria of the senses and disposable pop culture fads that they’re willing to become criminals. There’s not a tragedy to Spring Breakers because Korine’s characters are too clueless to recognize that they’ve fallen to the bottom of the social hierarchy; this is a world where ignorance is bliss, and superficiality has eroded any comprehension of comparative advantages.
IMAX is an ideal method to screen Spring Breakers because the film’s intended to be belligerent with its digital expressionism and blaring needle drops. It wasn’t enough for Korine to simply depict his characters as shallow and toothless, as to watch from afar wouldn’t offer insight on their perspective. Spring Breakers is a fever dream where the gross presence of the sun-drenched criminal underbelly of St. Petersburg has given birth to a caustic path of self-destruction. The identification of any distinctions between these characters is superfluous, as they’ve all chased the same standard of what the Internet’s “it girl” should be.
Accusations of misogyny dogged Korine, as modern criticism isn’t often willing to make the distinction between depiction and endorsement, and doesn’t consider that he may only have intended to chastise a very specific subculture. However, the premise that Spring Breakers is sexist is particularly wrong-headed when the film’s most disgusting character is the drug dealer Alien, played in a career-best performance by James Franco. Alien may be the epitome of every stereotype of a degenerate grifter, as his pathetic desire to be a rapper is only held back by his capacity for mayhem. The fact that Franco, who has dealt with his own accusations, was willing to become such a repulsive character allowed Spring Breakers to shine a spotlight on the toxic men whose influence has been heightened by the social media era.
Depictions of era-specific culture can often age poorly, as any attempts to encapsulate the in-jokes and populist interests of a certain generation are bound to be lost once they are replaced. However, Korine was so thorough in Spring Breakers’ commitment to every trivial fixation of 2013 that the film’s now a period piece. The fact that the specifics have become irrelevant has only strengthened Korine’s argument about the trivial nature of party culture. Any temporary pleasure that could be derived from the film’s indulgent spectacle is refracted into a gross, foreign synopsis of depravity.
Whether Korine cab make another masterpiece is unclear; after his Matthew McConaughey stoner comedy The Beach Bum took an oddly populist approach to material that felt like it was in his wheelhouse, Korine went off the deep end with experimental thrillers Aggro Dr1ft and Baby Invasion, which could only be described as “films” in the loosest definition of the word. Nonetheless, Spring Breakers is now more relevant than ever; what was once an amusing warning about life viewed through an Instagram filter is a crushing origin story of fabricated insight.