"Spring Breakers," that cultural phenomenon about scantily clad college co-eds and James Franco's "sh-t," may also have another name: "fever dream."
From The New York Times and Rolling Stone to right here at HuffPost Entertainment, it seems that writing about "Spring Breakers" without also mentioning illness-caused hallucinations is forbidden. Calling Harmony Korine's film a fever dream is, to quote the film, constant, y'all. Ahead, the 17 best uses of fever dream as shorthand for the fever dream that is "Spring Breakers."
1. "'Spring Breakers' is Harmony ('Gummo') Korine's fever dream of something he never experienced — an orgy of sand, sin and snorting." -- Roger Moore, Seattle Times
2. "A candy-colored fever dream is the most unforgettable movie of the year so far." -- Richard Roeper, Chicago Sun-Times
3. "'Spring Breakers' unfolds as a fever dream of teenage kicks, a high-concept heist movie with mescal in the fuel tank." -- Xan Brooks, The Guardian
4. "It’s a vision: a fever dream of sun-dappled debauchery that doubles as a thriller-satire on the allure of excess." -- Ben Kenigsberg, Time Out Chicago
5. "The fever dream structure helps to transform 'Spring Breakers' from what could have been an obnoxious celebration of unbridled hedonism, with Korine serving as the ringmaster who parades his sociopathic characters around like freaks (so that audiences can hurl insults at them)." -- Sandy Schaefer, ScreenRant
6. "'Girls' writer/director/star Lena Dunham knows a thing or two about taking artistic risks, so it should come as no surprise that the 26-year-old had plenty of praise for the Harmony Korine-directed vacation fever dream 'Spring Breakers.'" -- Unbylined, MTV
7. "Around the time the women start wearing hot-pink ski masks and wielding AK-47’s Faith decides enough is enough, leaving her friends to descend deeper into a depraved fever dream." -- Brooks Barnes, New York Times
8. "It’s like a fever dream of bad behavior, so outrageous and wrong it’s worth indulging." -- Fred Topel, Crave Online
9. "What follows is a high wire act for film critics, who must simultaneously warn audiences about the content, try to explain its fever-dream presentation, defend their appreciation of the often depraved material and (perhaps most difficult) describe James Franco's performance." -- Peter Hartlaub, San Francisco Chronicle
10. "'Spring Breakers,' writer/director Harmony Korine's lurid and violent fever dream, begins with a visual and aural blast." -- Richard Lawson, The Atlantic Wire
11. "Sunday night at South by Southwest Film Festival easily belonged to Spring Breakers, a kaleidoscopic fever dream from director Harmony Korine, who managed somehow to craft an art film steeped in the three tenets of 2013-era youth culture: sex, drugs and dubstep." -- Seth Abramovitch, THR
12. "When the lights went down, Korine's fever dream of gunplay, body shots and girls gone wild found a receptive audience. -- Fox News via Associated Press
13. "But often the oddfellows mesh beautifully, making us question why this film is the way it is: a fever dream of drugs, sex and violence." -- Germain Lussier, Slashfilm
14. "Mix in a trance-y, dubstep-y score by Skrillex and Drive composer Cliff Martinez, and a soundtrack featuring Rick Ross and Gucci Mane (who also co-stars as Franco's rival drug dealer), and it all makes for a looping, boozy fever dream of a movie that looks, as Korine says, 'like it was lit with Skittles.'" -- Josh Eells, Rolling Stone
15. "What's great about Korine's film is that it starts in a place of relative plausibility and just keeps pushing further and further into a fever dream that's a titillating parody of a concerned parent's worst fears." -- Tim Grierson, Deadspin
16. "A weird sort of fever dream of American excess and aimless youth populated by former Disney girls and an utterly mad James Franco it is a film that many will likely hate but which I personally absolutely adore, one of the fun parts for those of us fortunate enough to have seen it already is getting to watch the marketers turn themselves in knots figuring out how to sell it to people." -- Todd Brown, TWITCH
17. "Harmony Korine's fever dream is out in limited release right now (and screens nationwide starting on March 22), but the buzz surrounding the film was deafening in Austin." -- Christopher Rosen, HuffPost Entertainment
UPDATE: An earlier version of this post attributed one mention of "fever dream" to Rene Rodriguez of The Miami Herald; it was actually said to Rodriguez by "Spring Breakers" director Harmony Korine. The post has been updated to reflect that change.
