The Doom Generation (1995)

October 25, 1995

FILM REVIEW;Gory Kitsch in a Parody of Teen-Age Road Movies

By JANET MASLIN

Published: October 25, 1995

Production notes for Gregg Araki's "Doom Generation" say it is "Araki's first big-budget feature and marks the end of his film adolescence." Well, not exactly. After a promising debut with "The Living End" followed by the angrier, more marginalized "Totally F***ed Up," Mr. Araki is still sounding a note of self-congratulatory teen-age rebellion in a film gruesome and obvious enough to make "Natural Born Killers" look like a model of restraint.

It's not even much of a change to find "The Doom Generation" billed as "a heterosexual movie," since it shares the effective homoerotic energy of his earlier work. That this film includes a teen-age girl, Amy Blue (Rose McGowan), as part of its sexual menage only means one especially clear target of contempt ("Don't get your uterus all tied in a knot" is one of the more printable things anyone says to her) in a film overflowing with it. Amy's insolence and Anna Karina hairdo (like Uma Thurman's in "Pulp Fiction") may offer a touch of Godard. But this film's satire of teen-age-wasteland cinema is so coarsely exaggerated that any homage is beside the point.

Using outlaw characters named Red, White and Blue to condemn all aspects of unhip America, Mr. Araki indulges in such broad parody that thinking it clumsy means failure to get the joke. Though visibly more polished than his earlier films, "The Doom Generation" clings to a midnight movie sensibility founded on deliberate kitsch. So Amy is a one-note, rude, sulky heroine, saying things like "Life is lonely, boring and dumb" while the two men she's sleeping with enjoy an obvious attraction to each other. Not content to leave this as subtext, Mr. Araki throws in the occasional bumper sticker: "Ditch the bitch. Make the switch."

Voluptuous Xavier Red (Johnathon Schaech) is way ahead of charmingly dim Jordan White (James Duval) in getting the hint about this, but it doesn't matter: "The Doom Generation" leads them both to a gory demonstration of America's intolerance toward sexual nonconformists. Obscured by strobe lights and boosted by the alternative-rock soundtrack that's sure to help sell the movie, this already notorious castration sequence is one of several gross-out epiphanies here. Others include the severing of a head that still talks, and even vomits, after it is removed from a vein-spurting body, and a blink-of-the-eye cameo by Heidi Fleiss.

The genuine enthusiasm Mr. Araki brings to this film's bedroom scenes, with their whimsical sets and jokey porn ambiance, is matched by the occasionally workable black humor in his screenplay. ("You murdered two people tonight. Doesn't that faze you at all?" "Yeah, I'm bummed. To the max.") But sledgehammer direction, heavy irony and the easiest imaginable targets hardly show talent off to good advantage.

THE DOOM GENERATION

Written, edited and directed by Gregg Araki; director of photography, Jim Fealy; music by the Jesus and Mary Chain, Nine Inch Nails, Showdive, Curve, Meat Beat Manifesto, Pizzicato Five, Cocteau Twins and others; production designer, Therese Deprez; produced by Andrea Sperling, Mr. Araki and Why Not Productions (France); released by Trimark Pictures. At the Angelika Film Center, Mercer and Houston Streets. Running time: 90 minutes. This film is not rated.