... is that it looks like a grittier, lo-fi rip-off of the old people characters by Seattle artist trio SuttonBeresCuller.

SBC in 2004:

Henry Doorly Zoo, March 2004, Omaha, NE. Posing as senior citizens, the artists enter the zoo at a discounted price.
  • Henry Doorly Zoo, March 2004, Omaha, NE. Posing as senior citizens, the artists enter the zoo at a discounted price.

Trash Humpers in 2010:

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Granted, dressing young people up in old-people makeup for pranks and mayhem isn't the kind of idea you can patent—but the resemblance is uncanny. And I think I prefer SBC's subtler approach.

Passing for old to get discounts at zoos and diners is funny and tender and sad. Half-assing old-person makeup and smashing TVs with hatchets is obvious and simple and let's-freak-out-the-squares-maaaaaan.


From the review:

In his earlier films—especially Gummo—Korine seemed to go spelunking into subterranean passages beneath the garbage dump of the American Repressed and return with odd, disturbing artifacts. The accumulated weight of his scenes felt like an unsettling, portentous dream. But Trash Humpers just seems like a shaky, strung-out nightmare.

Korine filmed the thing in a grainy VHS style, following around two old men and a hideous old woman (all of them spry actors in what must've been pounds of latex and makeup) as they fuck garbage piles and wire fences, swig from bottles in parking lots, smash TVs and fluorescent tubes, go peeping through people's windows at night, and hang out with acquaintances: a boy in a suit who beats a doll-baby with a hammer, some plus-sized women in BDSM getups, some freak with a German accent and a potbelly who smokes and plays the trumpet while lying shirtless in bed—you get the idea:

But let us remember Korine at the height of his poetic powers—so far—with a montage from Gummo:


I just adore that climax to Roy Orbison's "Crying."

(You can read the whole Trash Humpers review here.)