Back this past fall, The Criterion Collection put out a box set with all three films in Gregg Araki's Teen Apocalypse Trilogy, with Totally F***ed Up, The Doom Generation and Nowhere on Blu-ray and the last two in 4K. Not only is this the first time the last two were on 4K, but it's the first time since its VHS release back in the day that Nowhere had an official US release. It's also the first time The Doom Generation has been on 4K and the second time it's been on Blu-ray stateside, with the previous Blu-ray release from Strand also being the first US release of The Doom Generation since the woefully lackluster Trimark release in the mid-to-late-'90s (4:3 pan and scan from an analog source).
Nowhere is described by Araki as "90210 on acid" and it shows in spades. James Duvall returns for yet another Araki film as Dark, a films student whose seemingly ordinary day takes a turn for the bizarre from an erotically charged morning shower to a shocking ending I dare not spoil. Between being yelled at for making the bathroom as "soggy as an armpit" by his mother (Beverly D'Angelo) and a dream come true turning into a surreal nightmare, Dark hangs out with his friends whose day also take a strange turn on the way to the third act set in a hedonistic house party where all the stories converge. By this point, his friend Cowboy (Guillermo Diaz) hits a snag with his drug-addled boyfriend Bart, a girl named Egg falls for a teen idol, three valley girls (Rose McGowan from The Doom Generation, joined with Traci Lords and the late Shannen Doherty) fall prey to an alien's ray gun, Dark's relationship with his girlfriend (and the relationship between her and her girlfriend) is put to the test, said girlfriend's little brother and his girlfriend get carjacked by a vicious gang, a drug-fueled game of kick the can ends with an alien encounter and a can of tomato soup is used for something other than being used to dip a half sandwich into.
Definitely one of my fave Gregg Araki films.
