Four college girls—played by Vanessa Hudgens, Selena Gomez, Ashley Benson, and Rachel Korine—have a little too much fun down in St. Petersburg, Florida during their spring break. Getting arrested, however, is not quite the reality check it should be since eccentric gangster Alien (James Franco) bails them out and lures them to the dark side of the party town. Pereninal bad boy filmmaker Harmony Korine cast Franco in a role he was born to play—ludicrous, stupefying, and creepy all at once—while dressing former teen idols in neon-colored bikinis and balaclavas for shock value. The music of Skillrex, Cliff Martinez, Gucci Mane, and even Britney Spears blitzes through this manic sensory experience. Guns ablazing, beats pounding, Spring Breakers is a pitch-perfect cultural artefact of 21st century Americana.

Harmony Korine (b. 1973, United States) started his film career when he met director Larry Clark while skating in Manhattan. The young Korine wrote the screenplay for Clark’s Kids (1995)—a highly controversial film about the lives of teenaged New Yorkers. He made his first feature film Gummo (1997), starring Kids alumn Chloë Sevigny. In 1999, he participated in the Dogme 95 movement with Julien-Donkey Boy (1999). Korine eventually tried his hand in more ‘conventional’ filmmaking with Mister Lonely (2007), but he went straight back to his provocateur-mode with the minimalist oddity Trash Humpers (2009). His 2023 film Aggro Dr1ft was shot entirely with infrared photography and premiered at Venice Film Festival.