Sometimes cigar is just a cigar. And, sometimes, low budget “edgy” transgressive film about nihilistic youth indulging in sex and violence isn’t some kind of profound statement about sorry state of America and the rest of Western civilisation. Or, at least, you might get that impression after watching The Doom Generation, 1995 black comedy written and directed by Gregg Araki.
Protagonists are Amy Blue (played by Rose McGowan), 18-year Los Angeles girl who likes metamphetamines, and her naive boyfriend Jordan White (played by James Duval). One night they pick up mysterious man called Xavier Red (played by Jonathon Schaech) and the trio, during the stop at convenience store, gets into altercation that would end with its owner being accidentally decapitated with a shotgun. In order to plan their next move and possibly avoid capture, they check in motel where it becomes apparent that Amy, despite initially disliking Xavier, doesn’t mind having sex with him. Jordan, who is less experienced and more curious, is, on the other hand, confronted with being Xavier’s object of interest and himself thinking about alternative forms of sexuality. As the trio tries to evade capture and the emerging romantic triangle slowly leads to inevitable experimentation with group sex, they continue to get in bizarre and dangerous situations, with Amy constantly being mistaken for someone’s past love with bloody consequences.
Before The Doom Generation Gregg Araki has established himself as prominent guerilla film maker with extremely low budget films, which, due to their subject matter, were considered to belong to New Queer Cinema movement. This film, although being subtitled “a heterosexual film by Gregg Araki”, does cover those themes, but by the time of its premiere in “politically correct” mid 1990s, much of its “edginess” was gone. Araki, who managed to get relatively high budget for its standards and even feature some notable in small cameos (infamous former madam Heidi Fleiss, stand up comic Margaret Cho and Parker Posey, actress who would later become darling of American independent cinema). But the most of the audience would pay attention is to explicit sex and violence, including scene featuring certain bodily fluid that would few years later play important part in much more mainstream There’s Something About Mary. Despite being heavily censored at the time, The Doom Generation, even in its unrated version, doesn’t look that shocking, at least in comparison with an average television series that you might find on today’s streaming services. Most of the problems of the film can be found in its nihilistic attitude and generally dislikeable characters that makes viewing rather unpleasant experience. While its starts relatively well by establishing strange dialogue and darkly humorous tone, Araki apparently loses much inspiration in mid section and ends film with pretentious ultra-”artsy” scene with heavy quasi-political symbolism that features swastika and US flag. Cast does solid job, especially Rose McGowan and James Duval who looks like young and more innocent Keanu Reeves. Critics, due to some similarities in plot, have often compared The Doom Generation with Natural Born Killers. Araki’s film is better than Stone’s – it is better directed, features nice cinematography by Jim Fealy and, most importantly, it is mercifully short with barely 80 minutes of running times. All that, however, isn’t enough to recommend to anyone except most hard core cinephiles interested in curiosities that used to be “edgy” long time ago.
RATING: 3/10 (+)
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