He has been acclaimed for his films Gummo (1997) and Julien Donkey-Boy (1999) which explore unconventional narratives and themes of dysfunctional families, as well as Mister Lonely (2007), Spring Breakers (2012) and The Beach Bum (2019).
Korine was born to a Jewish family in Bolinas, California, the son of Eve and Sol Korine. His father was an Iranian Jewish immigrant. His father was a tapdancer and produced documentaries for PBS in the 1970s about an "array of colorful Southern characters"; he would take Korine to carnivals and circuses and taught him how to use a Bolex camera. As a child, Korine watched movies with his father, who rented Buster Keaton films for Korine and took him to see Werner Herzog's Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970) in the theater. Korine reminisced that "I knew there was a poetry in cinema that I had never seen before that was so powerful."
Korine spent his early childhood in the San Francisco Bay Area living with his family on a commune. In the early 1980s, they relocated to Nashville, Tennessee, where he attended Hillsboro High School before moving to New York City to live with his grandmother. As a teenager, Korine spent his summers in San Francisco, "skateboarding, living on rooftops, running away from my parents, getting in fights. You know, girls. At that point I was just getting into movies, but the idea of making films happened later in high school." He began frequenting revival theaters, watching films by John Cassavetes, Werner Herzog, Jean-Luc Godard, Rainer Werner Fassbinder and Alan Clarke. In an interview with Bruce LaBruce, Korine briefly mentioned that he studied Business Administration in college. Other sources state that he studied Dramatic Writing at Tisch School of the Arts at New York University for one semester before dropping out to pursue a career as a professional skateboarder.

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