"American Carnage" unpolished but an admirably ghoulish political satire

American Carnage (2022)

Chasing that socially-conscious horror template of Jordan Peele’s “Get Out,” Diego Hallivis’ “American Carnage” has so much on its mind and so many jarring tonal shifts that it’s no wonder it ends up bursting at the seams. As satire, it’s ham-fisted, playing its relevant politics with a heavy hand. But as a bonkers, tongue-in-cheek horror movie with a point-of-view, it’s entertaining to see how much gets thrown at the wall. With the detainment of immigrants and their children, the questionable meat in burger chains, political corruption, and a broken system that treats people like livestock, maybe “American Carnage” isn’t that far off from the nightmarish reality of a capitalist society. Messy and on-the-nose, yes, but it's got some teeth.

The film opens as a rah-rah All-American infomercial, awkwardly doubling as a credit sequence. It’s initially pro-Latinx with a pop culture montage of Oscar-winner Benicio del Toro, Dora the Explorer, AOC, and the “Hamilton” cast before segueing into former President Donald Trump’s xenophobic words and Fox News commentary on border control. It’s clear that “American Carnage” will be an incisive (and very direct) response to the political climate since 2016, albeit with some genre B-movie weirdness for sure. As such, “American Carnage” somehow ends up grinding together “Soylent Green,” "The Forever Purge," “A Cure for Wellness,” and even M. Night Shyamalan’s “Old," and it's an admirably deranged hodgepodge. 

Nice-guy burger flipper Juan Pablo “JP” Valdes (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.) is just trying to save up to make his dreams in music a career, while his older sister Lily (Yumarie Morales) has just been accepted into Columbia University. As they proudly celebrate Lily’s going away, JP and his family are raided by ICE officers. An executive order has been issued by Governor Finn (Brett Cullen), who’s backing his re-election campaign on deporting all undocumented immigrants. JP is taken to a holding detention center but then offered an alternative to deportation if he agrees to be an orderly for the Elderly American Tolerance & Understanding Project. At a deluxe retirement home called Owl Cove, he’s joined by other detained youths, including activism rebel Camilla (Jenna Ortega), paranoid hypochondriac Chris (Jorge Diaz), swaggering jokester Big Mac (Allen Maldonado), and Micah (Bella Ortiz), JP’s love interest. Of course, nothing is right about this prison, er, program that prides itself on helping senior citizens or the head honcho, Mr. Eddie Davis (Eric Dane), who’s working towards a natural order with his eldercare.

Writer-director Diego Hallivis and co-writer Julio Hallivis clearly have understandably angry feelings toward the subhuman treatment of Hispanic Americans and express those feelings in a pulpy genre package. If the Hallivis brothers are trying for horror, they aren’t always successful, however, an old man convulsing and contorting his body is one of the rare jolts. Characterization comes in broad strokes, and why JP and these four particular “kids” come together is never really set up but rather just accepted. Jorge Lendeborg Jr. (2021's "Night Teeth") just oozes everyman charisma as JP (and ends up rocking some silly Bride of Frankenstein hair in the end). Proving she has the talent and spark to improve any film she’s in just by showing up, genre-queen-of-the-moment-and-here-to-stay Jenna Ortega (2022's "X") is another bright spot. Here, she mostly has to spout a lot of snarky attitude as Camilla, but Ortega does nail it every time. “American Carnage” isn’t always a polished work, and subtlety is not welcome here, but it is ghoulish, ideologically unsettling, and kind of fun at the same time. 

Grade: B -

Saban Films is releasing “American Carnage” (100 min.) in theaters, on demand and digital on July 15, 2022.