American Carnage is a 2022 American political horror comedy written by Julio Hallivis and directed by Diego Hallivis, starring Jorge Lendeborg Jr, Jenna Ortega, Bella Ortiz, Allen Maldonado, and Eric Dane.
Overnight, a governor passes a law enforcing the detainment of all illegal immigrants and their children for being accomplices. While the immigrants are deported, the children are given two choices, stay in detainment, or spend six weeks in a program where they care for the elderly at a lavish center under the supervision of Eddie (Dane). Afterward, releases are promised but strange behavior from the elderly patrons suggests there is more to this place than initially presented.
The film provides examples of:
- Accomplice by Inaction: Invoked by the governor on the children of immigrants, reasoning that they are accomplices for not reporting their parents as undocumented immigrants.
- Amoral Attorney: The seemingly kindly lawyer who presented the option of the center was in on the nefarious plot to trick teenagers into signing themselves up to be rapidly aged, murdered, and processed for meat to be distributed at a fast food chain as a cheap meat supply. She is shown being arrested.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Many, namely Eddie, Micah and the lawyer who all pretended to care about the children of immigrants and the elderly.
- Bittersweet Ending: The governed is exposed, Eddie, Micah, and the racist guards are all killed by JP, Camilla, Mac, Lily, and the other surviving prisoners who then escape, but JP, Lily Camila, and several other children are still aged with no promise of reversal of their conditions and only Mac to take care of them as they are on the run. Also, Several people have died agonizing deaths which might still be the fate for some survivors.
- Body Horror: What ever is in the drug ends the victims life by making the body contort violently.
- Cruel and Unusual Death: If rapidly aging with a cap of Body Horror doesn’t count, not much can.
- Evil All Along: Micah is a mole within the prisoners click, with it strongly implied that her white passing appearance has allowed her privileges from Eddie
- Evil Plan: Starts evil and gets worse. Detaining children of Illegal immigrants and tricking them into labor and an elderly center with the false promise of release. Evil, right? Then pumping them with drugs that weaken them and age them rapidly until their body turns on them and they undergo a painful death. Then using said corpses as a cheap meat supply for a fast food chain. Screw evil, screw monstrous, that's unforgivably bad.
- Evil Redhead: Micah is a redhead and a villain.
- Love-Interest Traitor: Micah pretends to return Jp’s interests but it’s all a ruse.
- Rapid Aging: The Elderly patients at the center are children of illegal immigrants who have been drugged with an agent meant to soften their bodies for meat processing, with rapid aging as a side effect.
- You Have Outlived Your Usefulness: Eddie gives a speech once to JP about how immigrants and their children were useful for cheap labor and how he "appreciates their service" but now with improved automated services and technology, they are no longer needed in the US.
