Social
Justice Warriors are sure to chastise us for minimizing the contributions of
Cannibal-Americans to society. For instance, nobody considers all the people Jeffrey Dahmer helped while he worked as a phlebotomist. Call us
unreconstructed, but many Americans would just as soon be rid of flesh-eating
serial killers. However, cannibals, violent psychopaths, and drugged-out
sociopaths will be championed as the marginalized and dispossessed victims of a
anthropophagusaphobic-normative society in Ana Lily Amirpour’s The Bad Batch (trailer here), which opens
today in New York.
After
receiving her “bad batch” verdict, Arlen is dumped outside the Texas border
fence (fences, get it?) with a bottle of water and told to sod off. She is
quickly picked up by a gang of cannibals who live in post-apocalyptic Venice
Beach-ish trailer park commune known as “The Bridge,” led by the distinctively
tattooed “Miami Man.” After seeing an arm and a leg get served up, Arlen
manages to pull off an unlikely escape. Fortunately, when she collapses in the
desert, a twitchy drifter (a stunt cameo by Jim Carrey, probably supplying his
own wardrobe and hairstyling) drags her to a safe haven called Comfort.
The
entire economy of Comfort seems to revolve around a flea market, but the
charismatic leader, “The Dream” provides free drugs and a nightly rave DJed by
Diego Luna for all residents. Yet, The Dream is a lecherous bigamist, whereas
Miami Man is a good to his wastelander urchin daughter, therefore the Bridge was
actually the more ethical community—or so Amirpour would have us believe.
The
problems with Bad Batch run wide and
deep. Even more fundamental than its iffy logical consistency is the personality-less
lead. As Arlen, Suki Waterhouse displays zero screen presence. We have no sense
of what goes on in her head, so when she makes highly dubious decisions during the
third act, we can only conclude she is also a sociopath and therefore most
likely deserves to be where she is. At least Jason Momoa is well-cast as the
bulked-up Miami Man, but his dodgy Cuban accent adds a further note of off-key
pitchiness.
Frankly,
Bad Batch is like a late 1980s vision
of near-future post-apocalyptic dystopia (analog media, Ace of Bass cranking on
the soundtrack), filtered through a prism of 2016 politics. In scene after
scene, Amirpour takes us out of the film and invites us to marvel at its relevancy.
Border fences, xenophobia, sexual exploitative leaders, ooooh how daring.