All technique and smartass quips, no soul. Araki wants to shock and disturb but the violence in the film is so empty and meaningless that it doesn't make you feel anything other than apathy. Maybe that's the intention. But I could just go and stare at my toilet for two hours and get the same effect.
The violence and profanity in this movie has nothing to bounce off of---shock techniques don't work unless you make the audience see some elements of beauty, irony, humanity (Dig Roman Polanski's "Repulsion", Franju's "Eyes Without a Face", Oshima's "Realm of the Senses", most of Dario Argento's works). Araki's violence exists in a vacuum. It's not so much that he rubs the audience's face in violence and gore; he can't be bothered with little things like characterization, subtext or plot so it's not like there's some reward or payoff for sitting through his empty brutality. Nihilism for its own sake.
"The Doom Generation" is childish dreck. All attitude, no insight, no invention. Somebody gave Greg (scuse me GREGG) Araki real money to make this?
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The violence and profanity in this movie has nothing to bounce off of---shock techniques don't work unless you make the audience see some elements of beauty, irony, humanity (Dig Roman Polanski's "Repulsion", Franju's "Eyes Without a Face", Oshima's "Realm of the Senses", most of Dario Argento's works). Araki's violence exists in a vacuum. It's not so much that he rubs the audience's face in violence and gore; he can't be bothered with little things like characterization, subtext or plot so it's not like there's some reward or payoff for sitting through his empty brutality. Nihilism for its own sake.
"The Doom Generation" is childish dreck. All attitude, no insight, no invention. Somebody gave Greg (scuse me GREGG) Araki real money to make this?
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