Directing: C
Acting: B-
Writing: C-
Cinematography: B
Editing: C

The longer I think about the Mexican film New Order, playing in theaters now, the less I like it, or even think there was any point to it. The movie is both intentionally and effectively unsettling, until the events unfolding desensitize you into not caring about any of the people onscreen—just as the oppressive forces taking over Mexico City don’t care about anyone.

I just . . . don’t get it. This film has gotten decidedly mixed reviews, with many appropriate comparisons to Bong Joon Ho’s Parasite (2019), which takes a similar thematic look at class warfare. Any favorable comparison is outright preposterous, however; Parasite has an invigoratingly inventive narrative, is incredibly entertaining, and has something to say. None of these things can be said of New Order, really.

Writer-director Michel Franco has a particularly literal take on the concept of class warfare. The film begins at the wedding of a young couple at their wealthy parents’ home, increasingly frequent hints and references to a working class uprising occurring around the city and getting progressively closer to them. There are offhand comments about how they should have postponed the wedding, met with dismissive reactions.

Franco focuses on this young couple and their parents as the primary characters, plus the woman who heads the house staff, and her son. The focus is decidedly on the wealthy family though, and maybe a third of the way through the film, the rioters scale the walls of the property, and overtake everyone there.

They aren’t nice about it. If there’s any pertinent idea to take away from New Order, it’s that many people talk endlessly about “revolution” without acknowledging how inevitably violent a genuine revolution would be. One of the uprising men enters the property with a gun, and his response to pleading is just to blithely shoot the person. There’s a lot of this.

Franco clearly wants us to be thinking about the income gap, as many of the house staff gleefully take part in the looting of the house almost immediately. Several people are summarily executed as soon as they hand over their valuables. Men, women, children, a pregnant woman, you name it and you’ll see that person get shot in this movie. The tone is oddly neutral as all of this is observed, and we get little in the way of backstory or any of these characters.

My biggest problem with New Order might be that no one in it is particularly characterized as a good person. The one possible exception is the young bride, who might be the character we find ourselves rooting for in a different, better movie. Instead, we’re subjected to witnessing her kidnapped by armed militia, humiliated, in one scene sexually assaulted. It really just gets worse from there, and we are never given any hint that she’ll get out of her predicament. And this film doesn’t seem to have any real moral point of view on what we’re watching, or even necessarily want us to feel for her. All that’s left, really, is nihilism.

I don’t consider having sympathetic characters in a movie a requirement. But if all of your characters are either morally bankrupt or headed there, your movie should at least have something to say. I still have no idea what I was supposed to take away from this movie, which is oddly casual in its persistent violence.

It’s also confusing. Eventually, I lost all sense of who really had control of the country. There was the working class uprising, but then the society gets overrun with military—if this was an excuse for the military to stage a coup, then why does the film switch to focusing on masked soldiers in fatigues without bringing up the working class rioters to begin with? Are they one and the same? The young bride (only ever seen in a bright red pantsuit, incidentally; never in an actual wedding dress) is taken hostage by militia members, and I could never distinguish between them and the Mexican military, or figure out whether they were indeed different. At first I thought it was the fed-up working class who kidnapped her, but then they are seen doing horrible things to her and to other rich people being held for ransom. Is this what we’re supposed to expect from the oppressed and downtrodden? The camera cuts away just before we might otherwise see them pulling down some guy’s pants and using an electric prod to shock his asshole. Why we even need to see that much, I have no idea.

It’s one thing when stuff like this a depiction of historical events that should be learned from, but New Order is a fantasy—one not far from our reality, admittedly, but it’s still all just a made up story. And why? What are we getting from a story like this? Does Franco just want to assert that it doesn’t matter what “side” you’re on, you’re capable of the basest, most horrific acts against your fellow humans? That doesn’t make for a very pleasant trip to the movie theater, I can tell you that much. Spoiler alert: nearly every character you’re introduced to in this movie is dead by the end. The best I can say about this movie is that you won’t have related much with any one of these people, but by the end you’ll be left with a bleak view of humanity. If that’s your thing, knock yourself out—but I rather hope I forget all about this movie sooner than later.

*I’ve heard about party crashers but this is a little much.*

Overall: C