Ana Lily Amirpour's The Bad Batch (2016) is a romantic horror film in the genre of futuristic dystopia. The project of the Anglo-Iranian-American film director, screenwriter and Hollywood actress can be presented as a variation on the burlesque thriller Six-String Samurai, a kind of imitation of Wheatley's High-Rise, a kind of Hillcote's road movie “The Road”.
The time and place of events in the movie The Bad Batch is the post-apocalyptic reality of the United States. The authorities get rid of non-functional citizens of the state in a simple way: they send them to the Texas wasteland. Rejected people are stigmatized: behind the ear, everyone has a “defect” tattoo and a “bad batch” number. Drug addicts, bandits, illegal migrants and other asocial elements fall into the outcasts of society. They have no hopes for correction and return, they have to survive “here and now”.
Another ballast thrown off the shoulders of modern society is Arlene. A pretty blonde makes her way to where others like her live - to the city of Comfort (Consolation). On a deserted road, cannibals attack her and drag her away. Arlene is just a protein food that the hefty, muscular meat-eaters of the Most community need a lot. There are no cellars and refrigerators here, the problem of preserving stocks is being solved radically. The caught person is not killed, but eaten in parts, sawing off with a hacksaw what they are going to fry. The area is teeming with crippled, half-eaten people. The girl who has lost her right arm and leg becomes one of them. He tries to run: first by crawling, then he finds a skateboard and gets to the junkyard. A local hermit picks up a cripple who has fallen unconscious and delivers it to Consolation on his cart.
Arlene, who now has prostheses, spends almost six months in the city with the pompous Find Comfort sign. The local leader named Dream takes care of everyone - he preaches sermons about the meaning of life, arranges parties with music and DJs, provides utilities, distributes drugs. The city is full of pregnant concubines of the sugary and lustful guru, because young women want a "dream within themselves." Arlene doesn't like that prospect. She escapes into the desert, where she is found by a brutal big man with a tattoo on his chest. A wild, naive and pure-hearted cannibal - a Man from Miami - admires the starry sky with her, talks about his beloved daughter, showing a portrait of the baby he has drawn. Further events between a potential victim and her aggressor develop according to the classic scheme of the Stockholm syndrome.
The girl, once again to the cannibals, realizes that the risk of becoming someone's dinner is too great. There is no hope for the universal kindness of the Man from Miami. She escapes back to Consolation. For Arlene, the cannibal's daughter is tied, and she brings the baby to her home. She likes a rabbit that Arlene once bought at the market. She gives the girl a small animal, because the child is going to play with him, and not eat rabbit meat. But the idyll does not last long: the cannibal's daughter is kidnapped by the people of Dream. The guru in his palace feeds her with delicious spaghetti, loads her with toys: "if you want to grow a garden that will feed you, take care of it."
A man from Miami learns from an old hermit in a junkyard where his daughter disappeared. An enraged father finds Arlene in the desert, blackmails that he will take away her prostheses, and threatens with death. Upon learning of the loss, he softens his anger, offers help. He gives Arlene a ride on a scooter, shelters him from a dust storm, and fights off a bearded vagabond when he wants to exchange human flesh for a can of gasoline. In the vicinity of the Consolation of Travelers, a patrol detects. The shooter wounds the Man from Miami, and Arlene delivers to the city. The girl manages, under the guise of someone who wishes to find a “dream within herself,” to enter the Dream Palace. She removes a pistol from her prosthesis, takes one of the guards hostage. Together with the baby, who is holding her beloved rabbit in her arms, Arlene rushes on a golf cart to the Man from Miami.
The meeting of the main characters and the reunion of father and daughter takes place in the middle of a dead desert. The girl takes the man's hand. He understands that it is impossible to go to the Bridge with loot for his fellow tribesmen. She doesn’t want to return to the euphoria of the stoned Consolation junkies. It remains to look for hope in the lifeless wasteland. At this time, the baby begins to be capricious - she is hungry. Arlene distracts her, her father takes the rabbit, steps aside and imperceptibly slaughters the animal. Final shots: three sit around a fire and have dinner with fried rabbit meat.
At such an ending of the film "Bad Party", the bewildered viewer has only pity for the killed animal. Throughout the entire timing, he did not decide whether or not to sympathize with the main characters-marginalized. The difference between the two worlds - the primitiveness of cannibalism and the illusion of well-being while high - is only in the nature of the prevailing evil. Hence - the conclusion about the concept of the film: complete “hopelessness. point. com ". Finding an alternative way to survive is meaningless. All the same, all the same dregs of society, flawed people from the "bad party" will remain around. The inner emptiness of a person thrown into the street - this is what is well revealed in the film.
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