Badlands Review

Hauntingly sad film about the vast emptiness of America. The long stretches of road, the open plains, the mountains in the distance that you can never quite reach and whose promise isn't quite real anyway. The "open road" as a trap, a lure so the emptiness can envelop and digest you.

Kit here is as much of a symbol as anything, allegorical like a horror movie monster, his James Dean looks and smooth talking charm hiding the same hungry emptiness that exists in the titular badlands. Holly is seduces by him as she's seduced by her journey into America, into the false ideal of pure self-reliance, into the acceptance of the violence that sustains her position as natural and inevitable. And why not? It's clear that Kit picked her because she was fifteen, because she was out alone without friends, because he could envelop her whole heart while still remaining at his core empty.



Those terms suggest a continuum where, for example, the solution to being overstimulated might be to just be in a dark quiet room for a while. And sometimes that does help! But I find it's much more helpful to think of the continuum as one between "bad stimulation" and "good stimulation". These terms also aren't great, because "bad stimulation" can be something fun like spending time with people that nevertheless cooks your bean a bit. But the point is that you can counteract it with experiences that are stimulating in ways you expect and can control, like a hot shower or a favorite food or music you know inside and out.