“Assassination Nation” is a tongue-twister and also the latest film from actor, writer and director Sam Levinson.

The film follows a group of four 18-year-old girls in Salem, Ma. The town has fallen victim to a cyber terrorist who hacks into everyone’s computers and phones, and leaks their information onto the internet.

The film is incredibly entertaining. Levinson must have seen “Spring Breakers” a time or two because his movie borrows a lot from Harmony Korine’s. Most notably, it takes a meta-modern approach to filmmaking that is rarely seen.

Near the beginning of the film, the principal of the leads’ high school holds a press conference to address the public outcry over the contents of his phone. His speech is passionate and frustrated. He attempts to address real issues, and the crowd drowns him out with attacks on his character. The scene is intercut with shots of a high school party; drinking, drug use and other provocative images visually clutter the speech. The purpose of this is to undercut the importance of what he is saying while simultaneously keeping it sincere. It works fairly well in this moment, but it is rarely seen afterwards.

The film is mostly heightened realism. However, there are moments of absurd humor throughout. In a moment showcased in a trailer, the character Bex exclaims, “I love this song!” No song is playing. Then she snaps her fingers and a hip hop song orchestrates the rest of the scene.

It is moments like these that make the film interesting.

They also make it fall apart. While there are great moments, the movie cannot seem to decide exactly what it wants to be. All these moments that could make the movie memorable come so randomly that the film feels like it is trying to do too much at once.

It understands how to do heightened reality, it understands how to do absurdism, and it understands how to do meta-modernism, but it refuses to choose one and stick with it.

That is not to say that “Assassination Nation” is a bad movie; it’s far from it. Being good at absurdism and meta-modernism is hard for any filmmaker to pull off. But trying to include them at the same time makes the film messier than it needed to be. If the film chose what it wanted to be and played into that as much as possible, it could have very well been an amazing movie.

As is, however, it is still a decent film. The cast has good chemistry, the cinematography is mostly good and the banter is funny. Some of the best jokes of the year are in this movie.

All in all, “Assassination Nation” gives the viewer a good time and a lot to think about. Its downfall was just trying a little too hard.

Written by Jacob Maher.