Director: Gregg Araki
Year Released: 2010
Rating: 1.5
Sexually ravenous college student Smith (Thomas Dekker) has relations with men and women in what, at first, seems like a typically cheesy Araki movie about vacant, promiscuous youth ... until it reveals itself to be an inert science-fiction picture with the life of the planet at stake. Araki's dialogue has always been grating to the ear and it's no different here - I'll never figure out if he thinks people talk like this, if he's trying to be cute, if he's trying to be 'satirical' or what - and whether he believes his ditzy creations are loveable or laughable is also up for debate, but to his credit he always makes his actors and actresses 'look' their best (flattering angles, generous lighting, colorful garb, gratuitous nudity), The concluding explosion was a much more effective joke in the utterly haywire Dead or Alive (by Takashi Miike), where the death of the planet was simply inevitable considering the escalating violence ... here it's just an easy way to end a nonsensical story.