The new wave of exploitation cinema is all about the immigrant experience

polygon.com:

American Carnage wants to make one thing clear right away, so there’s no room for doubt: This is a film about the United States of America and its horrid treatment of immigrants. Opening with a montage of real-world news clips of detention camps and right-wing pundits’ dehumanizing invectives, American Carnage’s opening minutes swell in a crescendo of Latin misery. It all climaxes with an excerpt from Donald Trump’s inauguration speech, from which the film takes its name. Then, having set the stage with its Fox News Greek chorus, the story begins at a burger joint where all of this hatred is grilled up into horror-comedy metaphor.

Directed by Diego Hallivis with a script by Hallivis and his brother Julio, American Carnage takes place after an unspecified state’s governor enacts an extreme enforcement of immigration law that declares family members of undocumented immigrants — even their U.S.-born children — are aiding and abetting a felon and should be incarcerated in detainment centers.

This is how first-generation American teen JP (Jorge Lendeborg Jr.) has his life upended when ICE raids his family’s home during a party for his sister, Lily (Yumarie Morales), who’s just been accepted to Columbia University. Separated from their family and each other, JP and Lily are incarcerated in a detainment center and, along with a number of other young prisoners now getting arrested thanks to the new law, given a choice. They can either ride out their detainment and try to get their lives back via the slow and arduous legal system, or they can volunteer at a new government-run elder care facility and live in something closer to comfort.

From the very start, American Carnage wants viewers to know that something is amiss at this