:
James Duval,
James Duval,
Rose McGowan,
more...
:
Gregg Araki,
Gregg Araki
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: Lions Gate
: Independent, Gay & Lesbian, Features, Quest, Road Movies
: 83 min.
: English
: English, Spanish, French
see additional details...
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Billed as "a heterosexual movie by Gregg Araki," The Doom Generation is the director's self-styled bad-taste teen film. Amy Blue (Rose McGowan) is an obnoxious teenage speed freak and her boyfriend Jordan White (James Duval) is a passive, slow-witted poseur who won't have sex with her because he's terrified of AIDS (even though they both claim to be virgins). One day, they run across Xavier Red (Johnathon Schaech), a charming but enigmatic drifter who has a bad habit of killing people. Joining the young couple on a seemingly endless road trip, Xavier (or "X,"as the verbally challenged Jordan insists on calling him), proves a threatening and repulsive yet strangely alluring companion whose very presence raises issues of loyalty and sexual identity. The Doom Generation is dotted with a variety of eccentric cameo appearances, including comic Margaret Cho, actress Parker Posey, musician Perry Farrell, "Hollywood Madame" Heidi Fleiss, and onetime Brady Bunch star Christopher Knight. This is the middle installment in Araki's "teen apocalypse trilogy," which also includes 1993's Totally F***ed Up and 1997's Nowhere. ~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide
You might also enjoy:
Splendor
Araki's later film was a bit more fun, stylized, fairy tale-ish
Kalifornia
Young 'uns on a killing spree, wheee! Better than the more (in)famous Natural Born Killers; fun to see David Duchovny in a different light
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| Underappreciated Work of Offbeat Art
by eyeswide
February 1, 2009 - 1:07 AM PST
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2 out of 2 members found this review helpful
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True, this one's not for everyone (hence many bad reviews). It's disturbing, violent, existential, muddled & confrontational. Still, I think it's underrated. There's artistry here, woven subtly through a seemingly patchwork plot.
1st time I saw it, it haunted me for days. Didn't watch it for years until this week, reminded me why I dug it: It's both glaringly contemporary (in an urban wasteland way) and a nostalgic tribute to several other styles. This film inspired me to come up with a genre moniker: Neo-Pulp-Noir. As in Noir, it's dark, morally amiguous & characters + dialogue swing between deliberately campy, & truly intense. As in Pulp, there's lots of sex & violence, & futility of the human condition. There are nods to Natural Born Killers here, but the scenes of surreal, bloody carnage so grotesque it's almost comical, are worthy of Japanese horror maven Takeshi Miike!
I'm not a Rose McGowan fan, she's so good at playing the irredeemable, but behind the obvious f*** everything bravado of her Amy, we see the freaked out vulnerability of a teen in a screwed up world. The dynamic between her and James Duvall's sweet, simple Jordan is both tender & erotic. All 3 teens exhibit an equal amount of the insatiably compulsive, & yearningly lonesome. We're pulled between seeing them as monsters, & relating to their alienated pathos. They're emotionally dulled casualties of the TV generation, but their human spirits keep breaking through as they journey in the wasteland. The plot's meant to be disjointed, to convey a hyper-real immediacy of circumstance.
Finally, this is a perfect example of how a great soundtrack can turn a B-flick into a unique, unforgettable vison. Araki has a gift for picking killer, non-mainstream bands, which he says come from his own collection. In D.G, the music is a brilliant mix of pounding industrial and ethereal shoegaze, & is frequently downplayed, as if coming through the car stereo, so it serves to punctuate the sense that you're right there, in the moment, a teenager again, caught up in a sensory bath of danger, love, excitement, and erotic adrenalin. |
| Woof
by goobercat
August 4, 2004 - 10:36 AM PDT
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7 out of 10 members found this review helpful
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Apparently written and filmed by high school students, the only redeeming feature of this film is a shot of Rose Macgowan's breasts about 20 minutes in. You'll get more compelling drama and originality reading the intructions on microwave popcorn.
A dog... total garbage... don't say you weren't warned... |
| No redeeming cinematic value.
by butterdiver
April 12, 2004 - 8:52 PM PDT
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7 out of 8 members found this review helpful
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I kept waiting for it to get better.
I started to lose hope after the talking severed head. It just got worse from there.
The dialogue was insipid and forced, the characters inane, and the plot ridiculous. The cinematography was somehow worse still. The editing was so bad that I had no idea what even happened in several scenes.
83 minutes of my life are gone and I want them back!!
Save your time. Rent Kalifornia or True Romance or even that gawdawful Natural Born Killers instead. |
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GreenCine Member Rating
(Average 4.95)
213 Votes
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| Neo-Pulp-Noir |
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| Dark, stylish, morally amiguous, over-the-top flicks about alienated teens (usually), that merge sex, violence, hip street fashion & killer music, and are an existential comment on the world as media spectacle. |
eyeswide
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