Nowhere

Plot synopsis:
A day in the life of Dark Smith (James Duval) an 18-year-old, alienated Los Angeles high school film student who dreams of the "End of the World" and is obsessed with finding his true and lasting love before "the end" comes in order to get away from his nagging, working class mother (Beverly D'Angelo) whom he lives with. The object of Dark's affections, Mel (Rachel True), a bisexual African-American girl from where he goes to school, feels for him deeply but can't commit herself to any one person or gender, splitting her time between Dark and her curvaceous, purple-haired, acid-tonged, lesbian girlfriend Lucifer (Kathleen Robertson). Dark, meanwhile, becomes enthralled by the beauteous Montgomery (Nathan Bexton), a young, blond, homosexual with two different color eyes from his school who's literally "a vision to behold the golden California sun."On this typical Friday morning, Dark, Mel and Lucifer drive in Mel's car to The Hole, their local coffeehouse hangout for breafast. They pick up Montgomery, who's standing lonely at a bus stop also looking for a ride there. At the Hole, Dark meets and commiserates with his best friend, queer industrial rock star Cowboy (Guillermo Diaz) who has troubles of his own: he can't find his boyfriend and band mate, Bart (Jeremy Jordan), who's on a self-destructive downward spiral that threatens both their romantic and musical partnership. Bart, at that very moment, is at the home of the scurvy, green-haired, drug dealer Handjob (Alan Boyce). Bart is far more interested in Handjob's wares than in the perversion of being offered by the dangerously sexy dominatrix duo of Kriss (Chiara Mastroianni) and Kozy (Debi Mazar), Handjob's live-in S&M girls.Also convening at The Hole for a "sugar gorge" are a trio of girls from where the gang also goes to school. They are the metal-mouthed, wisecracking Dingbat (Christina Applegate), the "brain" of the group; Montgomery's best friend Alyssa (Jordan Ladd), a poetess who warns him of the impending Armageddon which is supposedly happening tonight; and the meek and dewy Polly, nicknamed Egg (Sarah Lassez). While everyone is making plans to meet for that night's game of kick-the-can and the big blowout party happening later, the bulimic Egg is wooed in the girls restroom by a Teen Idol (Jaason Simmons from TV's "Baywatch") who is so famous that no one needs to utter his name. The Teen Idol offers to take Egg for a walk and she happily agrees.A little later outside The Hole, Egg's older brother Ducky (Scott Caan) arrives where Dingbat brings him up to date on his sister's budding romance with the Teen Idol. Oblivious to the fact that Dingbat has a crush on him, Ducky is googly-eyed over Alyssa. But she is head-over-heels for a Harley-straddling stud named Elvis (Thyme Lewis). Alyssa's torrid and kinky sex with Elvis at his apartment a little later gets an extra frisson from the psychic connection she shares with her self-destructive twin brother Shad (Ryan Phillippe), who at that moment is going at it with his luscious girlfriend Lilith (Heather Graham) after a fortune teller (Charlotte Rae) tells them about their impending deaths.While Mel and Lucifer race on the Venice boardwalk on their roller blades, Lucifer's sister Jana (Denise Richards), Jana's friend Shannon (Teresa Hill) and local hunk Noah (Kevin Light) watch them as they are modeling for a photo shoot on the beach.As the hot sun continues to beat down on Los Angeles, the weird stuff starts happening. While waiting at a corner bus stop to go home after classes, Dark watches agog as a trio of nattering Valley Girls (Traci Lords, Shannen Doherty, Rose McGowan) are vaporized by a raygun-toting Alien (Roscoe) who disappears before his eyes before he can film it with his video camera. Dark stands there wondering if was it real or just another acid flashback?And things go from bad to worse for Egg when the Teen Idol brings her to his place where, after she refuses his advances, the man suddenly flips out and transforms into a Mr. Hyde-type sex fiend who proceeds to rape and savagely beat her to a bloody stump.Bart, high on drugs, finally gives into Kriss and Kozy's demands for some fun and lets them do tasteless and other unspeakable things to him. At the same time, Mel sneaks into Darks bedroom for a period of afternoon romantic sex, only to leave in a huff soon after.At the school baseball field that evening, Dark, Mel, Lucifer, Montgomery, Cowboy, Dingbat, and Ducky begin their game of kick-the-can, all of them high on halogenous to make the game more harder and interesting. Then Dark witnesses Montgomery vanish into thin air as well as the Alien lurking around the locker room where Montgomery was last seen. But Dark has no choice but to join the rest of his friends who are heading to the phantasmagorical party going on at the home of Jujyfruit (Gibby Haynes). Also at the party are two dumb fashion models named What (Devon Odessa) and Ever (Stacy Keanan) who are looking for some excitement.The only ones missing from the party are Egg and Bart, who are tucked in the sanctuary of their respective bedrooms, both of them bloodied and bowed by the unexpected encounters with danger. The devastated teens are each riveted to their TV sets, watching the mesmerizing cathode-ray vision of Moses Helper (John Ritter), a televangelist who hard-sells the eternal, everlasting salvation of Heaven. Bart's non-English-speaking Swedish parents, Mr. and Mrs. Sighvatssohn, (Christopher Knight and Eve Plumb) sit in front of their living room TV set and watch the news where the newscaster Julie (Lauren Tewes) talks about the hot dry weather over L.A., the unconfirmed alien abductions, and of the Atari Gang that the people are to beware of.
As Egg and Bart succumb to the insidious exhortations of Moses Helper, and commit suicide (she by slashing her wrists and he by a gas oven), Jujyfruit's party cranks to full-blast.Meanwhile, Mel's little brother Zero (Joshua Gibran Mayweather) picks up his blond girlfriend Zoe (Mena Suvari) outside her apartment building and they drive through the city looking for Jujyfruit's party. Zero and Zoe follow a trio of scary looking drag queens (John Enos, Nicolette Gato, Brian Buzzini) on their way out of a convenience store, only to get lost on a back road. Zero and Zoe then come across Shad and Lilith in their car nearby. But they aren't very cooperative in giving Zero and Zoe directions to the party and they drive off. Things get even worse for the young couple when Zero and Zoe are accosted by the notorious Atari Gang (Aaron Smith, Tres Trash Temperilli, Sara Jane) roaming the city with automatic weapons made to look like video ray guns, who proceed to steal their car. After hitching a ride with Handjob and his girls, Zero and Zoe finally locate the party, wandering through the wild crowd like its a hallucinogenic version of Disneylands "Its a Small World" ride.But Dark is having no fun at all. Mel has just rejected both him and Lucifer to go off with Surf and Ski (Keith and Derek Brewer), a pair of blond-and-bronzed identical twins. Cowboy leaves the party and phones Barts parents only to find out from the frantic, non-English speaking couple about finding their son with his head inside their gas oven. Also, Ducky gets a call on his mobile phone from his father (David Leisure) who informs him about his sister Egg's terrible fate. Crazed with grief, Ducky leaps into the swimming pool and nearly drowns. But Ducky is saved by Dark and Dingbat who dive in after him. Going into the house to fetch a towel, Dark experiences yet another unsettling Alien sighting. Dark also walks into the kitchen to witness Elvis turning his murderous rage on Handjob by beating him to death with a tin can over him selling him and Allysa phony drugs.His day having reached its final low point, with Bart, Egg and Handjob dead, Elvis apparently on his way to jail, Montgomery and three girls kidnaped by an extraterrestrial, Ducky trying to drown himself, and Mel having abandoned him for good, Dark is left alone with nowhere to go... but home to bed for the night, where he encounters one final surprise: the reappearance of Montgomery who climes through his bedroom window. Montgomery tells Dark that he was abducted by aliens along with some other people who performed experiments on them. He asks Dark to lie in his bed with him for a while to sort out his thoughts. Dark asks Montgomery to never leave him, when suddenly Montgomery starts going into convulsions and his body explodes, splattering blood and body organs all over Dark's bedroom, revealing a huge, terrifying looking, beatle-like creature inside him. "Im outta here," says the creature in Montgomerys voice, who crawls out the window. A blood splattered Dark sits on his bed too stunned to speak... and then screams.

Tags: murder, violence, cult, psychedelic, satire, romantic

Review:
The title is very appropriate because this film indeed leads to nowhere and it's Gregg Araki's view on the subject of teen-alienation.
The events presented are, in fact, realities of the lives of today's young people: sex, drug use, suicide, and mental illness are all dealt with in some way or another.
Think of it as "Earth Girls are Easy" meets "Eraserhead."Don't believe the people who have written that this film is about "typical adolescent experiences." It represents a certain SEGMENT of kids, but they are by no means typical of ALL kids.And frankly, it's dated already.
Anyhow, there's something hypnotic about watching shallow, self-absorbed, assholic kind of people taking drugs, having sex and having interesting hallucinations, but don't expect a point or a plot.
One person I watched it with (she thought she was an intellectual and felt it was beneath her to sit through it) said there was no way this film could be saying anything important and called it a "porno movie".
As for the homosexual things that go on in the film, I think that that makes people upset because it depicts these characters as human beings with emotions (which homosexuals and bisexuals are) and/or because it turns them on.
The reasons these scenes are erotic and entertaining is because Araki works with the characters and dialogue to make the sex interesting without showing any nudity other than the occasional male butt.
This is a movie for anyone who has ever been so bored with his or current situation that he or she can just lay back and dream up a world of love, death,sex, drugs and aliens abductions and the end of the all life as we know it.
so taking all that in to account this is a great movie to share with friends (and confuse the heck out of them) or to watch when you're feeling a little bored yourself.
This is all I really wanted to say about the film, however, since I need more lines, I'll just say certain aspects of the movie are alternately funny, sad, strange and still relevant today.
Araki effectively builds up a strong cast of aquaintances, making you want to see such characters as Dingbat and Dark in everyday, artificial, bubblegum high school class.
From the very beginning one can tell that this film is going to be a major head trip, and would likely be best watched while high on some manner of substance.
Gregg Araki´s film appears like an MTV-documentary (or an episode of "The Real Life") about an MTV-generation, whose imagination of life exists of sex, drugs, party and Playstation - a lifestyle which is fast and exciting, but after all also very surface and empty!
After many a twisted sex scene and some down right horrible acting, I began to get the sinking feeling that this movie really was going NOWHERE.
Some guy named Elvis gets into a fight with a drug dealer, claiming he sold him some bad drugs, Elvis ends up killing the guy by beating him in the head with a can of tomato soup, and the party dwellers barely seem to be phased, like they are too trendy to care that someone just got bludgeoned to death with some can goods.
This film is a sad attempt to use the trendy but taboo actions of the younger generation to make a movie with no point.
Nowhere may or may not be one of those modern-day "indy" films, but anyone who's seen Gregg Araki's previous film, The Doom Generation, knows that this guy caters to the B-movie crowd.
Oh yeah, plus there's an Alien about, and Dark is also a little down about that, you know how it is.Party at Juji Fruit's tonight!!!Nowhere is a mean-spirited, yet trippy look into the lives of confused, drug-addicted over-sexed L.A. teenagers.
I love the dark and apocalyptic feel to it, this definitely looks like the generation that's gonna witness the end of everything.
A lot of very known actors here appear playing some good but short roles (John Ritter, Beverly D'Angelo, Heather Graham, Christina Applegate, etc.), as well as some fetish people from media (Tracy Lords, the vocalist of the Butthole Surfers) & some other guys like the Brewer brothers or that guy that makes videoclips, Stephane Sednaoui.
Nowhere completes Gregg Araki's vision of having teens walking around like complete morons, taking drugs and having sex with anything that moves.
More of a film for older teens and younger adults, I was 22 when it was released, so I'm old now and I'll still play it for my younger friends and family members who always say "another one of your weird movies...".
Life is not easy for an angst-ridden bi-curious teenager and his fellow high school students in this uncanny early career film from 'Mysterious Skin' director Gregg Araki.
The film opens with a striking scene in which the teen pleasures himself in the shower while conflicting thoughts of beautiful women and a boy who he fancies flicker on screen, signifying from early on his sexual confusion.
I just finished watching this movie, which concludes Gregg Araki's ''Teenage Apocalypse'' trilogy.
Probably that's why the tangent appearances of adults in this film mark them as overtly disturbed and alienated, compared to the teens, who seem to be struggling not to reach the same end as their parents - even if that means burning out on a road that seems to be the only alternative.For me, this was a movie about innocence.
It's vibrant, a bit like dusting off an old Skinny Puppy album to listen to; endearing, dark, dated in the repetitive buzz.The urges are fluid, confused, sexual, as seen in the opening shower masturbation where the boy's mind flicks from a gay spark, to vanilla sex, to being dominated by two women.
An imaginatively nightmarish teen movie from Gregg Araki.
Whereas once we watched unknowns and marvelled at the subversive presentation of pop culture icons, such as John Ritter as an evangelist, now we see a film cast with movie stars.
Post-Nowhere ascension to stardom from some of the ensemble and subsequent turns in more typical teen movie fare reinforcing the film's off-kilter themes.The final part of a trilogy, following Totally F***ed Up (1993) and The Doom Generation (1995), Nowhere benefits from a decent budget which allowed for not only a high calibre cast and a decent glossy look but also for impressively rendered set design.
Something of a prototype for his bi-sexual romantic comedy Splendor (1999).Like Larry Clark's borderline mainstream endeavour Teenage Caveman (2002), Araki's film world is a comical yet disturbing extreme.
She is also seeing purple-haired Kathleen Robertson (as Lucifer), and tells Mr. Duval they should have sex with as many people as possible, before getting so old and ugly nobody will want them.Gregg Araki's "Nowhere" is mainly Duval's story, but other friends and acquaintances have sexual subplots.Witty airhead pal Christina Applegate (as Dingbat) likes stoner Scott Caan (as Ducky), who appears and disappears.
Like everything in the movie is far from real, but rather close to an LSD-trip.One could say, the lack of message and meaning makes it pretentious and useless, unfortunately some actually did.
Just like us people have the arrogance to assume we are different, better and unique than other animals, most movies and books share this same kind of endo-centric thinking.
As you can see I have very few good things to say about this movie including it's director, Mark Araki, who attended film school for 7 years.
I think they and the cast sat down and watched a bunch of cutting edge movies from different time periods and said, "now, lets do something like that...
Needless to say, it didn't work.I don't want to be too hard on anyone here because like I said, maybe somebody was trying to have some artistic integrity, but it's made plainly simple here, artistic integrity does not = a good film.
The best comparison I can make is one to the Airplane and Naked Gun movies that did a great job of making people look stupid without making them look like they were trying, as opposed to movies like Hot Shots part II(or whatever it was called).I've wasted enough time writing about this truly bad film.Rachel True, if you ever read this, I apologize for it, because I've liked you for a while now,,, but this was BAD!!!!!!.
Nowhere is a great movie about drugs, the party scene, and a group of people, who I might want to add are in *COLLEGE*, not high school.
"Nowhere" is one of those movies that strikes me as kind of a paradox: something that I want soooo strongly to like because of its aesthetic merit, but so void of any real substance that I end up sitting there, saying to myself "Ya, OK, and that was because...?" With all his other films, Gregg Araki has not struck me as someone with a dire message to tell.
But in "Nowhere," re-heated leftovers of Araki's previous two "films," we get a blindingly confusing mesh of a bunch of L.A. teens and all their sex, booze, and drugs.
The center of all this seems to be one guy, Dark Smith, who apparently likes his video camera and wants desperately to run away with the bi-sexual, bed-hopping Mel. This is the extent of the emotional depth in this movie.
If Fellini had seen this movie, I believe that he would have said, "yes, you can create an inventive visual image, but what's your point, dear boy?"...though he probably would have said it in Italian...This film is Clueless, with more violence and sex, but less warmth and humor.
Well, in some ways it is, but it really has a point.This movie has a most impressive cast, including James Duval (Independance Day, GO), Rachel True (The Craft), Nathan Bexton (GO), Christina Applegate (Married With Children, Mafia), Ryan Phillippe (I Know What You Did Last Summer, Cruel Intentions, 54), Olivia D'Angelo (National Lampoons Vacation Movies), John Ritter (Three's Company, Bride of Chucky), Christopher Knight and Eve Plumb (Peter and Jan Brady), Jeremy Jordan (Never Been Kissed), Shannen Dogherty (90210), Traci Lords (porn star), Rose McGowen (Jawbreaker, Scream, The Doom Generation),and the Brewer Twins."Nowhere" follows the lives of wacked-out teenagers roaming around LA doing stuff, including having sex, taking E's, and gossiping.
So you see....the morals are there, they just aren't displayed in your stereotypical Hollywood kinda way!The movie is laced heavily with trippy imagery....not too disimilar from Araki's The Doom Generation.
Yet, just like reality, the movie is chock full of drama, comedy, violence, tenderness, craziness and the unexplained.With great acting and on-the-mark dialogue, as well as wonderful sets, you should enjoy ninety minutes of Dark's life as well as his platoon of friends.The sad thing, however, is that the DVD has not been released in North America.
If you enjoy movies with plots involving surreal and suppressed homosexuality, this flick will still suck.Watching Dark wag the dog in the shower while a whole spectrum of bizarre fantasies cross his mind was just creepy.
And while the point of the film MAY have been just this -- to show a bunch of alienated kids without a reason to care about the world -- the directors forgot that they had to give the audience a reason to care about the message they're trying to give.
No teens I know behave this way, sure, some have sex and do drugs but really, you'd think the teenagers in this film were more like college kids not 18 year olds.
The characters in this movie are unlike most on film.
I must say that I couldn't believe that the same person who wrote this film wrote "Splendor."  So if your looking for a good Gregg Araki movie; watch "Splendor."  While it's not perfect (Splendor), it's much better than "Nowhere."  Save yourself from this mess of a movie; it was too late for me..
I saw Araki's previous film "The Doom Generation", I didn't understand it.
The whole time I was watching this I kept thinking that there is no way someone really tried to make a "fun" film which just came out terrible.
I know that this sounds like a conspiracy theory, but, this film comes across as right-wing propaganda to show the evils of drugs, parties (raves), sex, homosexuality, and aliens..
Again Araki has made a confused mess of a film, very much 'Doom Generation', by inundating this with way too many hapless, messed up teens, where half an hour after watching this, your mind is in a spin, where nothing is really resolved or is clearly potent, at the end of the view.
It's just like, this movie, we've seen it all before in The Doom Generation, which I'll just have to videe again.
After the superior, The Living End and Totally f**ked up, Araki's two next films spiraled, this one a more desperate attempt on the last, until he redeemed himself with Mysterious Skin, probably his best ever.
This is a going nowhere movie, though, like The Doom Generation, you can't deny it's color, and enthusiasm, in it's over the top characters and situations, where even a couple who were once the Brady kids appear.
It's pointless, but in the end great fun for how ridiculous it is, and a lot of people enjoy those types of films.With juicy dialog of how people can get blood poisoning and die from popping zits, brief mentions of testicle and ingrown butt hairs, how dogs eating people is cool and the captivating scenes of people being killed with tomato sauce cans, homosexuals bursting into alien bugs after being abducted, people wanting to die while they're getting a blowjob and people committing suicide to an aired preach about how Jesus can save you this movie is one big joke and an excellent one at that from beginning to end.It can be quite sexily perverse at times, too, and the atmosphere through out the whole film is on the "trippy" side.
There are tons, tons of enjoyable, fun cameos and supporting performances by Christina Applegate, Scott Caan, Beverly D'Angelo, Shannen Doherty, Heather Graham, Christopher Knight, Jordan Ladd, Debi Mazar, Rose McGowan, Ryan Phillipe, Denise Richards, John Ritter, Kathleen Robertson and Mena Suvari as well as incredible (for this type of movie) main performances by James Duval, Rachel True and Nathan Bexton.Though Mysterious Skin is definitely the better Araki film by a long shot, I suggest anyone who can take this for exactly what it is see it; it's fun.
But, let's face it, it's really a mess of a film, the kind only someone tripping on acid could possibly enjoy or call "a masterpiece".Just happened to catch this one on IFC (they sometimes have some great independent films), but this is from the lower tier of their product.This is the lost generation--and testament to the old saying that "youth is wasted on the young." Interesting only for catching a glimpse of a few names that became popular later on--JOHN RITTER, Christina APPLEGATE, RYAN PHILLIPPE.Summing up: A total waste of time.
Recurring characters pop in and out - the drug dealer who supplies Bart as well as the two ultra violent S&M girls he pimps (Dark fantasizes over them), a giant scaly alien from outer space with a ray gun who wanders in to blast teenagers from time to time (this also may be the key to the apocalypse talk), and a soapy televangelist with an 800 number who actually becomes the key to the film's "point".
Gregg Araki is one of the best film makers in some time; at least in my mind..
James Duval has to be one of my favorite actors because of Araki's films.
For one to really understand what Gregg araki is trying to do in each of his films, you have to have seen them all, but Nowhere is a decent place to start.
The dialogue first and foremost is young and surreal, but it gives the film a feeling all of its own, and the young cast really do pull off good performances in difficult roles here.Whilst most movies like American Pie and Road Trip try to take on the trials and tribulations of teenage life with a comedic slant these days, Araki keeps the humour there, but lets his creation sink to much darker levels as well, and includes everything.
This kind of films are hard to find,gregg Arakiuses all kind of teen icons to show everyone how the future of the Gen-x is happening Now. We get the same guy he uses all the time James Duvall and a lot of Known actors like Ryan Phillippe and Heather Graham doing it on every scene they´re on,The love fest begins,We have new kids playing Kick the can and doing drugs at the same time, we have some new kind of teen suicide that makes them cover their rooms in blood,aliens invading earth,gangs using weird names like "ATARI" and Drag Queens and Underage sex and drinking,Twin male models that talk at the same time,anorexic and bulimic chicks,Renegade lovers,guys without shirts just with suspenders on the street,barking drunk guys,gay references all over the place,It is not a morality tale...just a simple story about weird people doing stupid and weird stuff,I already have it on my collection because the sexy scenes are darn well good.
If you like Gregg Araki films you will LOVE Jon Moritsugu.
most people would look at this movie and think: "ok, this so isn't how teenagers are.
Gregg Araki seems to do whatever it takes to prove how original his movie is, but it just ends up being stupid.
Before you watch any other Gregg Araki movies (such as the amazing "Mysterious Skin"), watch "Nowhere" because it relates to his other films and really gives you a good idea of his film-making style.
And I wasn't surprised when she dumped that poor man's Keanu dumb looking-talking dude played by James Duval.Watch it if you like the odd quirky movie with a twist at the end.