Repulsive, amateurish and bracingly crude, Gregg Araki's sneering cinematic breakthrough The Doom Generation attempts to fuse the grim subject matter of a film like Kalifornia with the kitschy aesthetic of Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers. The end result is certainly far less than the sum of those parts and makes for an interminable, occasionally disgusting experience. Thankfully, Araki's grown out of this anything goes phase, instead tackling taboo topics (like child abuse) in acclaimed, accomplished films such as Mysterious Skin.

The Doom Generation is essentially a low-budget road movie, tagging along with three disaffected youths -- Amy (Rose McGowan), Jordan (James Duval) and Xavier (Johnathan Schaech) -- as they smoke, fuck, kill and swear their way across America, lost souls adrift on a road to nowhere. Plenty of cartoonish carnage transpires (gotta love that guacamole-spewing severed head) and Araki (who also wrote the film's screenplay) drives home his point repeatedly: Teenagers today are nihilistic young things bound for destruction and desecration (most tastelessly underlined in the neo-Nazi rape/Star-Spangled banner sequence). While Araki's point might've been timely over a decade ago, when The Doom Generation was first released in that mini-spate of hyper-caffeinated angst cinema in the early Nineties, it feels dated and a bit simplistic today. Natural Born Killers, for example, holds up despite being deeply rooted in the raging cauldron of media hypocrisy that boiled over during the O.J. Simpson trial; if anything, Oliver Stone's full-bore satire looks even more prescient now. In Araki's case, it's still a valid point (there are still teens moving blithely through their formative years), but the sense of cultural armageddon is less pronounced -- for better or worse, The Doom Generation is undeniably a film of and about its times.

Unfortunately, Araki's efforts are greatly hampered by his cast, all of whom wobble their way through The Doom Generation; while the prurient thrill of seeing McGowan naked for a healthy chunk of the film will draw some in, the wooden line readings of Schaech, Duval and McGowan are guaranteed to have everyone reaching for the fast-forward button. Even the look-at-me cameos (from the likes of Perry Farrell and Heidi Fleiss) aren't much to speak of; Araki's shotgun approach fails him in nearly every aspect of the film -- while his points are worth exploring, the execution is fumbled.

The Doom Generation has been released once already on DVD; this latest edition, billing itself as an "unrated director's cut" runs 83 minutes with credits and is clearly just a re-package job of the 1998 release (the fine folks who put this DVD together didn't even bother to strip the Trimark logos from the menu screen). It'd be interesting to hear Araki revisit this polarizing effort in a commentary track, but clearly it won't be on this disc.

The Video:

If you're waiting for a definitive DVD release of The Doom Generation, this ain't it. Presented in a shabby 1.33:1 fullscreen transfer, the image is consistently smeared, fuzzy or washed-out (nor is it presented the film in its OAR of 1.85:1). While the most egregious visual flaws are often fleeting, the film still generally looks a step or two removed from a VHS dupe throughout most of its 83-minute run time. While the film itself may not be to all tastes, there's no reason it couldn't be spruced up a bit.

The Dolby 2.0 stereo track is passable, but the pulsing industrial/techno soundtrack would sound less muddy if it were cleaned up a bit and spread out on a Dolby Digital 5.1 track. Dialogue (for the most part) is heard clearly and there aren't any truly glaring defects, although the lack of optional English subtitles is annoying.

The only bonus materials included are a handful of trailers for various Lionsgate films.

Repulsive, amateurish and bracingly crude, Gregg Araki's sneering directorial debut The Doom Generation attempts to fuse the grim subject matter of a film like Kalifornia with the kitschy aesthetic of Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers. The end result is certainly far less than the sum of those parts and makes for an interminable, occasionally disgusting experience. If there were supplements worth checking out, the disc might merit a rental for the curious; as it is, there's nothing to see here. Skip it.