ASSASSINATION NATION. God Save America

America has lost its mind. At least, Salem has—a small town with tidy houses and green lawns, epitomizing the swirling phenomena and moods of contemporary United States. The name of the town where Assassination Nation takes place is no coincidence. Sam Levinson‘s film takes us on a dangerous ride straight into the heart of an epidemic of fear and murderous frenzy. Although the action is set in the present day, the bonfires will once again burn in the name of social order and arbitrarily understood justice. The senses of viewers watching this aggressive and unconventional film will also be ignited.

The story is followed through Lily, the main character and narrator. The subjective perspective of a teenager provides viewers with a rapid insight into the social dynamics of Salem, mediated by ubiquitous social media, and allows Levinson to break conventions extravagantly through non-linear jumps, free use of voiceover commentary, and the integration of new technologies such as Messenger and WhatsApp into the fabric of the film. This creates a fluid collage that captures the fragmentation and multi-layered communication of a small community, serving as a representation of the whole (or at least the vast majority) of American society.

Levinson’s film is primarily a grotesque, mad tale about the spiraling paranoia of violence, distrust, and hatred, hypocrisy, and bigotry of American society, ready to descend into a destructive frenzy at any moment. All it takes is a spark to ignite extreme emotions and push people into a spontaneous witch hunt and hurriedly building bonfires. In the film, this spark is a series of hacking attacks, resulting in the revelation of compromising materials about the mayor and subsequently other members of the local community. The abruptly disclosed secrets, such as nude photos, intimate messages, or internet search histories, provoke general outrage and anger, gradually turning into paranoid fear and panic. At the center of the turmoil are Lily and her three friends, against whom the chaotic revolution eventually turns.

Assassination Nation offers a brilliant satire on the mechanisms of public opinion and the instincts driving the idyllic society dreaming the American dream. Levinson skillfully combines the issues of new technologies and cyberterrorism, gender inequality, crowd psychology, and information entrapment. In a world where there is no privacy, and attacks can come at any time from any direction, safety and peace are only illusory, and everyone seems to be waiting for an opportunity to lynch. Centering the story on four teenage girls, who are marginalized and subjected to social pressure in various ways, gives the film a distinctly feminist tone, providing a nuanced perspective on the position of women in society. Trapped by gender norms, physicality, and youthful rebellion,

Lily, Bex, Sarah, and Em become modern-day witches, for whom body and sexuality are both channels of oppression and spaces for emancipation. This paradox does not diminish the importance of either dimension but enhances the sense of entrapment and identity chaos in which it is easy to get lost. The heroines of Assassination Nation assume the cultural role of witches threatening order, while the on-screen Salem lives up to its historical tradition, becoming the stage for an absurd spectacle of prejudice and collective paranoia.

Assassination Nation is a breathtaking ride

While addressing many important and challenging topics, Assassination Nation does not lean towards cinematic polemics or heavy drama. Instead, the political and social weight of the film is diffused by the expressiveness of form and deeply self-aware irony towards the presented story and images. This allows the creators to maintain a critical distance from the issues, presenting feminist or anti-xenophobic themes very intelligently, without falling into extremes or convenient clichés.

Assassination Nation is a breathtaking ride, dazzling with changing dynamics, evocative motifs, and numerous narrative breaks. Juggling tropes and conventions, Levinson creates an explosive mix of comedy, brutal thriller, drama, and campy revenge movie. The film’s stylistic identity is primarily defined by the constant motion of quickly edited and smoothly transitioning sequences and the piercing basses of the soundtrack, giving the whole a trance-like momentum. It is a top-notch sensory experience that does not overshadow the serious social critique driving it.

The vision presented in Assassination Nation is both captivating and terrifying. The creators accurately target the sensitive points of contemporary society, making seemingly trivial elements of reality a pretext for a bloody massacre, an explosion of collective cruelty and conflict. Although exaggerated, the mechanisms of the absurd wave of hatred and aggression are disturbingly plausible, even familiar from experience, making the film impactful as it plays with the viewer’s awareness and sense of security in front of the screen. The titular nation of assassins is real, and Levinson’s film merely hyperbolizes genuine social tensions and pathologies, making the “modern Salem” a very tangible specter.

Assassination Nation combines what the best cinema should have—sensory entertainment based on technical proficiency and spectacular form, and strong, thought-provoking content conveyed through it. However, it must be admitted that the ending may leave some dissatisfaction. It includes a few too many banal accents lacking ironic edge, and the script offers a rather lazy resolution to the main intrigue, suspending the story somewhat in a vacuum. One could also criticize the lack of nuanced character portrayals (perhaps with the exception of Lily, who gains a fairly multidimensional, though not entirely deep, portrait). These are mere details, however, that did not spoil my overall reception of this crazy and brilliant film. The nearly two-hour screening is gripping and hardly allows a moment of breath or boredom, creating a conducive environment for the difficult and biting comments on contemporary USA.