Y tu Luna también: The Bad Batch (2016, R)

*Premise spoilers.*

Not the animated Star Wars show, by the way. This is quite the movie. I’m still not entirely sure what to make of it. It certainly does something interesting, even if it doesn’t always stick the landing.

In a vague modern dystopia, those deemed undesirable by society are branded as “bad batch” and exiled to the desert. A young woman named Arlen attempts to navigate the wasteland, which is home to both a cannibal gang and a drug-fueled pleasure cult.

The plot is pretty flimsy, running more on vibes than narrative. There are a lot of scenes of people wandering the desert, tangents of extreme violence, and long sequences of people partying at Comfort, the compound ruled by a man known as the Dream. But there isn’t much put into the world-building of this society, and the story is kind of a series of incidents, with thematic resonance here and there.

What I find most interesting about this approach is how sparse the dialogue is. Characters talk very much on an as-needed basis, and at least one doesn’t talk at all. Several of the main characters are pretty solitary, and even when they’re in scenes together, there can be long stretches where no one says anything. Some of the actors are better at this than others, and in the right hands, it can be kind of compelling.

Arlen is played by Suki Waterhouse, which is a name I’ve heard plenty, but I realized I haven’t actually seen her in much. Looking at her IMDb, she played Kitty in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and she was in one of the Divergent movies. She’s effective as a young woman who didn’t ask for any of this and is just trying to survive. Jason Momoa plays Miami Man, a jacked cannibal who draws/paints portraits and takes a no-muss-no-fuss approach to imprisoning and eating other people. Keanu Reeves appears as the Dream, while Jim Carrey is nicely understated as a mute recluse known as the Hermit and Giovanni Ribisi plays a mentally ill guy called the Screamer.

Side note: because the cannibals like to extend the use they can get out of their victims, they tend to keep them alive, cutting off one limb at a time. This means a number of nondisabled actors are playing amputees. Also, Momoa is saddled with a Cuban accent of dubious origin.

Diego Luna plays Jimmy, one of the few characters in the film with a name instead of a title. This is an odd choice, since he’s in like two scenes and has zero lines. As the DJ at Comfort, his job is to keep the party going. He hangs out in a DJ booth on wheels that’s tricked out to look like a giant neon boombox on wheels, and all we see him do is smoke and groove.

The Dream is the one who tells us Jimmy’s name, as part of a larger speech about what it means to be bad batch. He declares, “That’s right. All of us here, we weren’t good enough, smart enough, young enough, healthy enough, wealthy enough, sane enough. Freaks, parasites. This here is the bad batch.” And yet, he says, no one can DJ like Jimmy can. It’s an interesting moment that hints at rejecting society’s definition of value and embracing one’s own.

Recommend?

In General – Incredibly soft maybe. I feel like it might be interesting to see once.

Diego Luna – Naw, he’s hardly in it. It’s one of those “how did he wind up in this movie?” moments for me.

Warnings

Graphic violence (including cannibalism,) sensuality, drinking/smoking/drug use, strong thematic elements, and nondisabled actors playing disabled characters.