Last Thursday I caught the showing of the lurid, controversial and oh so millennial work that is Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers as part of the Guilt-free Pleasures season at the Picture House. Having never seen the film in cinemas before, I was eager to revisit it in all of its neon-clad glory.

The existing cult following of Spring Breakers has seen a revival in recent years thanks to the pop culture phenomenon that was Charli XCX’s BRAT – a conceptual dance album that echoes the film’s motifs of party culture – and the track Spring Breakers that appeared on its deluxe edition last summer. This screening then seemed perfectly apt following the film experiencing somewhat of a renaissance, thirteen years after its initial release.

Intercut with frenzied, Skrillex-scored beach montages of (real life) spring breakers, the film follows Faith (Selena Gomez), Candy (Vanessa Hudgens), Brit (Ashley Benson) and Cotty (Rachel Korine), four young women studying in a Kentucky University town. Listless, jaded and left to their own devices during spring break, they hatch a plan to break free from their dorms and party with the masses. What begins as a quest for freedom and empowerment quickly turns sideways when we meet Alien (James Franco), a local drug dealer and wannabe gangster who has his own plans for the girls. As the third film to be picked up and distributed by A24, Spring Breakers certainly played its part in establishing the studio’s distinctive brand; It served as a stylistic and narrative precursor to later releases in the A24 catalogue like American Honey (2016), Good Time (2017) and Zola (2020), films that also employed naturalism, hyperreal elements and dream-like imagery to explore the intricacies of American life.

Before going into the rewatch, I hadn’t realised just how much of Spring Breakers I was missing watching at home. With the film being shot on 35mm, the intention behind the texture, colour and lighting was felt rather than just seen on the big screen. The encompassing warm pink hues briefly lure the audience into the same naive fantasy that the characters inhabit, where wealth and adventure promise escape from the boredom and emptiness of their lives back home. Sickly, seedy greens and moody blues soon seep in though, and they serve as a gnawing reminder of the rot that lies just beneath. The constant flux between these two states captures the familiar feeling of a night out turned sour – when the party goes on, but the fun ended hours ago.

The film lays its themes on thick, turning the American Dream inside out to expose the corruption, exploitation and violence that are indelibly tied to the pursuit of wealth and power. The hyperreal, oneiric world Korine builds around these forces warps them into their most absurd and heightened form. With a narrative that centres around the corruption and exploitation of four young women, it was of course by design that Disney starlets (Gomez and Hudgens) and their teen show adjacent (Benson) – women who grew up in the industry, mythologised as icons of teen girlhood and innocence – were cast for the starring roles. The same can also be said for Britney Spears, whose music features recurrently. The depiction of women has been a key point of contention for audiences from the film’s outset; it is left for us to decide whether or not the objectification of the film’s female subjects informs Korine’s satirical commentary on 2010s popular media, and the hypersexualised representations of women that were prevalent within it. Regardless of its intention, the voyeuristic gaze makes for uncomfortable viewing and cultivates a constant sense of foreboding for these women.

The performances are less than standout, with most veering into the ridiculous (Franco’s appearances especially elicited groans from the room). The dialogue and dynamics between characters are bizarre, and they more so monologue and chant ritualistically than talk to each other. This unpolished approach has, to me, always given the film its charm and only emphasised the parodic tone as it riffs off of the moment in which it was conceived. I would go as far as to say that there is no film that embodies 2012 quite like Spring Breakers. It emerged as part of the zeitgeist alongside – or perhaps in reaction to – cultural productions being churned out in the US during the late 2000s and early 2010s with a focus on hedonistic, party culture (see: Project X; Jersey Shore; Indie Sleaze; “Recession Pop” and every song released by LMFAO), material excess and celebrity scandal. It exists as a vestige of a bygone era in the not so distant past, when Instagram was in its infancy, “YOLO” was plastered everywhere, and being a care-free young adult was a novelty.

Despite being Korine’s arguably most accessible and definitely most mainstream film, it still stands today as one of the most polarising works I’ve seen. At the showing, both positive and negative post-credit debriefs could be overheard leaving screen one, but one phrase seemed to unite first-time watchers: “What was that?!”. Throughout the years, the film has amassed a slew of labels: messy, sleazy, vulgar, gratuitous, nonsensical – but I think this is also precisely what grants it staying power and keeps audiences coming back. Whether you see it as empty provocation or biting satire, Spring Breakers has undeniably left its mark.

Sophie Laing