THE BAD BATCH Trailer
Ana Lily Amirpour continues to play with genre material in The Bad Batch, setting her sophomore film in a Mad Max–style wasteland soaked in violence and sex.
The trailer doesn’t inundate you with plot details, but the aesthetics speak for themselves. Missing limbs, scantily clad men lifting weights, and an ominous Keanu Reeves sets the table pretty clearly, and considering how high Amirpour’s reputation rose after A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night, that should be more than enough to get people excited.
With dystopias everywhere and the recent success of Mad Max: Fury Road, Bad Batch will have to work harder to feel as fresh as, say, the 2011 indie stunner Bellflower, but Amirpour’s brief film history shows that she twists convention as much as she feeds on it.
That history makes me believe reports of this film’s extreme violence, which shouldn’t be a surprise considering the menace at the heart of its world-building. The marketing for the film very literally winks at this, with the poster showing a gun held next to yellow shorts with a winking smiley face on the, ahem, backside. It’s telling you that this is meant to be grimy, gritty fun, but hopefully with enough self-awareness to have a point.
The Bad Batch is directed by Ana Lily Amirpour and stars Suki Waterhouse, Jason Momoa, and Keanu Reeves. It will be released in the U.S. on June 23rd, 2017. For international release dates, click here.
Are you excited for Amirpour’s second film? Let us know in the comments!
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