Harmony Korine’s Infrared Experiment Brings the Potential Future of Cinema to a Strip Club Near You

When Harmony Korine announced plans to form EDGLRD, a Florida-based multimedia collective aiming to produce films, video games, and other new media experiments that blur the line between traditional categories, it felt like a logical step in the filmmaking maverick’s creative evolution. The “Spring Breakers” director has been open about his boredom with conventional films and his newfound interest in the gaming industry, saying that the “Call of Duty” trailer “looks better than anything Spielberg’s ever done.”

“AGGRO DR1FT,” the first film project from EDGLRD, is an extension of that creative ethos. Shot with infrared cameras, the film starring Jordi Mollà and Travis Scott uses thermal imagery and AI-generated animations to tell a story about a Miami hitman trapped in a criminal underworld that looks like nothing we’ve ever seen in movie theaters.

Fittingly, the first non-festival audiences to see “AGGRO DR1FT” won’t actually do so in movie theaters. EDGLRD is distributing the film through a series of immersive screenings at unorthodox venues around the country, beginning with a premiere at the Crazy Girls strip club in Los Angeles featuring DJ sets from Korine on February 7.

“AGGRO DR1FT” predictably polarized audiences when it premiered at the 2023 Venice International Film Festival, but many critics praised its ambition and willingness to explore new cinematic horizons.

“‘Aggro Dr1ft’ moves at the speed of a thorazine drip so that Korine can focus your attention on the nature of its psychedelic design. That focus begins, of course, with the infrared cinematography, which introduces us to a garish world full of red oceans and yellow skies — a world that somehow looks more like Florida than Florida does in real life. And I’m only partially joking, as Korine’s aesthetic speaks to a broader attempt to pierce the surface of a thing in order to reveal its soul; to create a way of seeing that looks like hearing. A kind of emotional echolocation,” IndieWire’s David Ehrlich wrote in his review of the film. “The thermal imagery responds to heat signatures in a way that shows us more (and less) than a traditional camera ever could, and makes it impossible for anyone to hide from the lens. It also turns every character’s skin into a canvas for Korine to draw on, or see through.”

Watch the trailer for “AGGRO DR1FT” below.