I had one of the worst movie-watching experiences of my life with this one. I can’t even bring myself to re-watch it properly and even the first time I did, I found myself skipping through some scenes. I had written a scathing review on Letterboxd but I felt like with this new ‘Movie Maladies’ series, I’d go on a much longer rant. As I’ve said previously, this is all my opinion.

IMDb synopsis: Four college girls hold up a restaurant in order to fund their spring break vacation. While partying, drinking, and taking drugs, they are arrested, only to be bailed out by a drug and arms dealer.

SPOILERS AHEAD

A Spring Break Story Gone Wrong

So the plot of ‘Spring Breakers’ is pretty on-the-nose, following four girls who are friends and in college: Brit (Ashley Benson), Candy (Vanessa Hudgens), Cotty (Rachel Korine) and Faith (Selena Gomez). Now, as a Brit (no pun or reference intended), we don’t have spring break culture here in the UK. But I understand it seems to be a big deal for Americans.

Planning the spring break getaway, Brit and Candy decide to rob a restaurant to fund said getaway, bragging about their successes mostly towards Faith, who’s shown to be a Christian girl, with multiple profanities thrown in for good measure. This scene outstays its welcome and feels more ‘being vulgar for the sake of being vulgar’ than reflecting authentic young adult behaviour.

The majority of the film shows the girls in Florida, engaging in the utter wildness that is spring break on the beaches and at parties. The scenes definitely show the madness and hedonistic nature of this sub-culture but it’s difficult to find much substance when the film just propagates ‘spring break is chaotic’ any chance it gets.

The film continues to show Brit, Candy and Cotty getting very cosy with Alien (James Franco), some kind of rapper/gangster wannabe who bails the group out of jail. While his charms work for Brit, Candy and Cotty, he’s unsuccessful with Faith who is now extremely uncomfortable at a party he’s brought them to. Faith cries out her severe disappointment of their spring break, ultimately deciding to leave but unable to convince her friends to do the same.

Alien flaunts his wealth and Brit and Candy especially, behave sexually with him. Later on, when it’s just the three left, a threesome scene goes on for too long. There’s even a scene where Alien plays ‘Everytime’ by Britney Spears on the piano and it doesn’t help that I hate that song in the first place but it’s just jarring.

There is a bland tension between Alien and Big Arch (Gucci Mane), a drug dealer and Alien’s former friend. The latter is barely memorable and is responsible for threatening and enacting a drive-by shooting on Alien and the girls. Cotty is shot in the arm, and after breaking down in the shower, she follows in Faith’s footsteps by leaving too.

The climax shows the trio attacking and killing Big Arch and his crew. Alien dies in the process and Brit and Candy are shown phoning their parents, claiming they will improve as people.

There is little to take from this story other than young people on spring break get up to wild activities and it can go very wrong. But the shady, criminal activities are not believable because the film struggles on whether to glorify it or provide a cautionary tale for the audience, with what feels like a hasty insertion of the last two girls’ desire for redemption once home.

Annoying, One-Dimensional Characters

From my viewing, Faith was the only character who had some depth. Being a Christian girl but wanting to enjoy spring break despite its blatantly chaotic hedonism is an interesting dilemma. However, Faith’s screentime is short-lived and her departure from the film’s narrative comes just before the other girls fall in deeper with Alien. Her breakdown in front of her friends is a moment of vulnerability she allows them to witness. It’s as if the film seems to preserve Faith’s innocence by having her reject this vacation and return home where she seems to belong. Honestly, I’m questioning now on how Faith even became friends with Brit, Candy and Cotty given their stark differences.

Cotty is shown to share similar traits and behaviour to Brit and Candy. However, her presence in the film is so lacking that she may as well have been omitted altogether. Knowing that Rachel Korine is director Harmony Korine’s wife in real life makes it seem like a case of nepotism. A very wild choice of nepotism, in fact. Other than several scenes of her partying and sexual activity, her only memorable scene is the aftermath of the drive-by shooting. This is Cotty’s turning point, a sharp awakening to the horrific situation the girls are in instead of enjoying their break. The slow-motion shot of her shower breakdown seemed to linger a tad bit too much on the nudity, though. Cotty, while late, makes the right decision to leave for home too.

Brit and Candy had me almost seething with ire throughout the film’s duration. Both girls seemed interchangeable and had nothing distinct to their identities. Their introduction has them imitating oral sex on a male genitalia drawing, suggesting they’re wild to begin with. Both become enamoured by the thrill Alien’s lifestyle is bringing but show a temporary concern for their supposed best friends Faith and Cotty. All I could see were two sexually-charged, adrenaline seeking young women…just because..? There is little depth to either of their characters and motivations. The voicemail flash-forward feels shoehorned in as a last-minute attempt to uphold some morals or dimension to either of them. They feel like bland, lazy caricatures of the hyper-sexual American college girl. Honestly, if their ending was supposed to be some type of empowerment then it sure didn’t convince me.

Visuals With Little Purpose

Some of the bright, neon, summertime visuals of the Florida mise-en-scene is fine to match the chaotic tone. However, this felt like an example of ‘style over substance’ as there was little to connote from the visuals otherwise. The chaos of the film also felt far too straightforward that it was bordering on torturous. The amount of sexual content and nudity was also repetitive, as if it wasn’t enough to show hordes of wild youths in swimsuits, making out and snorting drugs off of each other.

The deep neon pink used to paint Cotty’s breakdown was a good choice. It helps elevate the downfall of the fun, feminine flashiness to a darker, brooding atmosphere parallel to Cotty’s realisation. Other than this, I can pick at straws with the final sequence with Brit and Candy’s bright neon green and pink silhouettes juxtaposing the gunned-down men.

The visuals for Faith’s scenes don’t seem to employ any specific colour palette. It just feels like the focus on spring break was more desired rather than elevate Faith as an innocent but naïve young woman. Oddly, the most developed character I could see had the least amount of visual storytelling.

Conclusion

I don’t think I’ll bother re-watching ‘Spring Breakers’ any time soon. The amount of hypersexual content was honestly kind of triggering and unless I can get a therapist asap, it’s gonna remain in the abyss of my least favourite movies. Harmony Korine had a few tidbits he could’ve better expanded and embellished. However, the end result is a headache of a pseudo-commentary with barely anything meaningful to hold on to.

While scrolling through reviews on Letterboxd, I’ve noticed there are a lot of people who think ‘Spring Breakers’ is a great film, some even hailing it a ‘masterpiece’. I’d have to respectfully disagree. Maybe I’m missing something everyone else saw. But this led to my understanding of the film’s status as a polarising piece of cinema.

Letterboxd rating: ⭐✨