The ‘Teenage Apocalypse’ Trilogy Is the Perfect Back-to-School Season Movie Marathon (for Sickos)
“Beverly Hills, 90210 on acid.”
It’s back-to-school season and here on Creepy Catalog we celebrate the same way we celebrate anything: by watching relevant movies. The perfect movie marathon for this time of year are three 90s indie movies written and directed by Gregg Araki known as the “Teenage Apocalypse” trilogy. Whether you’re heading to school yourself or you’re decades past your teens, these movies capture the essence of high school: social status, cynicism, experimental sex, drugs and otherworldly terror.
The Teenage Apocalypse trilogy includes: Totally F***ed Up (1993), The Doom Generation (1995) and Nowhere (1997).
Totally F***ed Up is a drama about six gay teens. The found footage aspects will remind viewers of Reality Bites (1994), but Totally F***ed is more authentic and edgy. The Doom Generation is a black comedy thriller about teenage lovers in Los Angeles who pick up an attractive drifter. Nowhere is where the trilogy really goes berserk. Araki calls this black comedy drama “Beverly Hills, 90210 on acid.” It follows a day in the life of Los Angeles college students as an alien invasion begins.
Together, these three subversive films paint a picture of life as a young person in Los Angeles in the 90s. Even when aliens are invading the planet, the teens can barely be bothered to care, distracted by navel-gazing and deep existential angst. The films are also incredibly funny, peppered with insane 90s teen dialogue like: “I feel like a gerbil smothering in Richard Gere’s butthole.”
The trilogy is a cult classic and features (then) burgeoning stars Rose McGowan, James Duval, Margaret Cho, Parker Posey, Rachel True, Christina Applegate, Ryan Phillippe, Heather Graham, Mena Suvari, Denise Richards, and Shannen Doherty. The Criterion Collection released the Teenage Apocalypse trilogy as a blu-ray set. You can stream the series on the Criterion channel, the Kanopy app, or video on demand services.
Further reading:
- 30+ Movies to Watch While You’re High
- 8 Creepy Movies That Are Hysterically Funny (If You Have a Dark Sense of Humor)
- ‘Donnie Darko’ Explained: An Analysis of Richard Kelly’s Masterpiece
