Delayed Reaction: Assassination Nation

The Pitch: You know what people love right now? Directionless political statements and trigger warnings.

After a series of data hacks, a small town goes crazy and turns on the group of girls they believe are behind them.

Oh, thank god. This IS from the same guy who made the HBO series Euphoria. There's no way this could've come from someone else. The youth focus, the very self-aware hip-ness, the provocative use of stark visuals. It makes too much sense that it's the same guy.

Here's the difference. I like Euphoria (so far, as of writing this). I pretty much hated Assassination Nation. For all the provocation of Euphoria, it's telling small and fairly grounded stories. It's about a small town. They have secrets. Everyone is messed up in some way. It's extreme, but it still feels real. Assassination Nation is over-the-top for the sake of being over-the-top. It feels like Sam Levinson watched The Handmaid's Tale followed by the Purge movies, then wrote a screenplay with the challenge to "think young".

One of the fast ways to turn me off of a movie is having the movie pat itself on the back. Assassination Nation does that in the first five minutes, rolling off a laundry list of trigger warnings for things that will happen. By the end, I half-expected it to pause for a moment to let the applause quiet down. I hate the MPAA, but it does a decent job letting people know what to expect. There's no need to warn people again unless you're expecting praise for how provocative you are.

And things went downhill from there. This movie just felt dirty. You know how people say you can't really make an anti-war movie, because if you are showing war then you are still glorifying it? That's how this felt. All the female and LGBTQ+ endangerment felt wrong. By the time it flipped the tables and had them fight back, that felt just as wrong.

And the ending, when the kid behind all the hacks said he did it for the lolz pissed me off even more. It's all nihilism for the sake of nihilism. What value does that have?

Perhaps the movie just wasn't for me. I really don't want to track down any positive reviews though. The chance that I'll come across the word "sheeple" is too high.

Verdict:Strongly Don't Recommend