A mind-numbing piece of would-be provocation from the button-pushing Harmony Korine, “Trash Humpers” gets no stars from me — not because it’s offensive and disgusting like his earlier “Gummo” and “Julien Donkey-Boy,” but because it’s about as enervating a way to waste 78 minutes as I’ve ever experienced.
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Deliberately shot on eyeball-gougingly ugly, badly lit analog video in Nashville, this plotless mess features Korine and his pals in geriatric masks, sometimes in wheelchairs, acting out.
They repeatedly try to raise audience hackles by committing “outrageous” acts like dragging dolls behind bicycles and, well, rubbing up against pretty much any surface available, including trash containers.
All the while they sing twisted nursery rhymes like: “Three little devils who jumped over the wall, chopped off their heads and murdered them all.”
“Trash Humpers,” which somehow made it into last year’s New York Film Festival, demonstrates that a supposedly “subversive” no-budget film can be every bit as boring and predictable as a megabucks Hollywood blockbuster.