American Carnage (2022)

American Carnage review by Mark McPherson - Cinema Paradiso

In the opening minutes of American Carnage, we’re treated to the film’s brutal thesis about the United States of America. As the narration and archive footage illustrates, America is a land that needs immigrants. It needs them not just for work and industry innovations but also to have villains. American institutions and politicians often need someone to blame when upper management and government entities fail us. But it goes beyond that in American Carnage, a film that presents the more grotesque nature of America-eating immigrants.

Such an absurd satire is at least given a decent dose of humanity and humor. The film’s central hero is JP, an immigrant teenager, who is instantly likable for taking on shifts to cover for desperate employees and gleefully standing up to racist customers. He’s jealous of his sister Lily, considering she’s now bound for college. That being said, he still supports her and bites his tongue to keep his spirits high. Those spirits are soon dashed when a fun party is broken up by immigration services. JP and Lily have become targets of an emergency order to imprison all immigrants immediately.

Faced with deportation, a separated JP is given an ultimatum; work your time off at a retirement facility or be deported. With no choice but to protect his family, JP accepts and is shipped off with other eccentric immigrants to the old folks' home, including the wise-cracking machine Big Mac. Their duties are fairly routine and dull with meal times and reading stories. But the elderly start acting up increasingly, leading to orderlies mysteriously calming them down. As JP and company probe into the sinister secrets of this facility, they uncover a diabolical plot to turn immigrant youth into literal hamburgers.

There’s a certain bluntness that is admirable about American Carnage. It carries a certain over-the-top and easy-to-read satire of the times, piercing a cultural issue with the American system. The problem is that most of this genius is only present on paper. The film spends so much time lambasting the violence and humor of this situation that it rarely carries a bigger punch beyond its greater allegorical twist. The twist itself is fine, but how it makes the sausage is the problem. It’s a film where the ingredients are more pleasing than the whole meal.

The cast works well, but they’re marching up a steep hill to find the hilarity and fury that such a screenplay demands. Big Mac, for example, spends all of his screen time cracking jokes, including the fake-out finale where he fears his friends may have died in the brutal escape from the facility. The greater cultural impact also feels lessened by relegating the public reaction to a couple of news reports. I also really didn’t appreciate the easy resolve that the film has for this dark Americana story, where the secrets are unearthed, and the corrupt Southern politician behind it all flees the country. Perhaps seven years ago, that might’ve been believable. But with the Overton window shifted so much in the past few years, you just know this politician would try to downplay his eat-the-immigrants plan and remain in power for “attacking wokeness” or “fighting for gun rights” or some other nonsense distraction.

American Carnage is almost too much of a farce to appreciate fully. There’s surreal wish fulfillment at play, where the villains are such overt bigots and corrupted money-makers that it feels easier to topple such garbage human beings. Who knows. Maybe we will see an American politician go this far in the next few years. But when that time comes, it’s hard to envision a plucky band of immigrants saving the day and conquering systemic injustice. One can still dream; if nothing else, it is satisfying to watch a bigot hiding behind capitalism get forced through a meat grinder.