Doom Generation
(1995)
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An extreme and stylish road movie from the director of Totally F***ed Up and Nowhere, The Doom Generation follows the tragi-comic adventures of a beautiful young slacker couple who form an uneasy alliance with a gorgeous, psychotic, bi-sexual drifter after he saves them during a botched convenience store robbery. Amidst a surreal urban landscape, the trio hop from one crazed and often violent incident to another, whilst developing a complex sexual tryst which culminates in a heart stopping finale. |
Gregg Araki succeeds triumphantly in both shocking the prudish and exhibiting his technical mastery in what he describes as his first heterosexual outing. Recalling such murderous road movies as Natural Born Killers, this is a self-satisfied affair that too often thinks a cinematic in-joke or a cheap shot at middle American mores is more important than expanding the characters of teenage lovers Rose McGowan and James Duval and their maniacal mentor, Johnathon Schaech. Araki glamorises the sex as much as the violence, but the sight of a shopkeeper's severed head continuing to scream after it lands in some relish will be most people's abiding memory.