THE DOOM GENERATION |
| CREDITS: Director: Greg Araki. Cast: James Duvall, Rose McGowan & Jonathan
Schaech. USA. INTRODUCTION: The second of Araki's Teen Armageddon trilogy, which kicked off with "Totally F***ed Up" and concluded recently with the excellent "Nowhere", finally gets a release thanks mainly to the success of the latter film. SYNOPSIS: Teen couple Jordan White (Duvall) and Amy Blue (McGowan) are somewhat inevitably joined by dangerous loner Xavier Red (Schaech) who leads them on a violent road trip out of Hell. REVIEW: I loved Araki's last flick "Nowhere" and so I gratefully accept this opportunity to see its predecessor, but it is a shame they've been released out of order, as the style of this film is clearly less polished and closer to Araki's guerrilla film-making routes than the later work. Keanu-a-like Duvall plays it vacuous as ever, and is joined by excellent Phoebe-Cates-a-like McGowan and a type-cast breaking Schaech to create the most disparate triumvirate in cinematic history, further aggravated by cameos from the likes of indie queen Parker Posey, Hollywood Madam Heidy Fleiss and Chris Knight from TV's "The Brady Bunch". Many of Araki's signature touches appear here, the overt subtext of signs, the bizarre interior decor and matching clothing, the eclectic cast and, of course, the doom-laden existentialist angst and alienation. Excessively violent, witty and well scripted it would be all too easy to mistake this for a QT production if it wasn't for the fact that it's actually very good. If you're in the mood for nihilistic prophesy set to the music of the Smiths this could be the film for you. Mutt's Rating: **** |