![]() Whereas the rest of the world for them seems increasingly meaningless, the only thing that makes sense for them is their get-togethers, where they share their daily experiences. Everything seems to go breezy yet on the brink of something catastrophic, as the bizarre gets normalized. Nonchalantly, the apocalypse seems to be nearing these characters every day, filling their lives with airs of uncertainty. The supernatural plots are rarely developed until the end, but the show is all the better for it – a focus on everyday humanity in absurd circumstances being something Araki has always embraced throughout his career. In the midst of all the absurdity, there is a tight, relatable bond of modern friendship that never breaks, tying the show´s oddball ideas together. Now Apocalypse, at its heart, is a hangout show. All that, while his astrophysicist girlfriend, Severine (Roxane Mesquida), shadily investigates that the alien sightings might not be exclusive to Ulysses. Meanwhile, one of Ford´s scripts gets unexpectedly picked-up by a mysterious big-time Hollywood producer, which leads him to get involved with a world of stardom where everyone acts a little off – it all seems too good to be actually real. Coincidently, these visions concur with other paranormal hallucinations Ulysses starts having, involving aliens in back-alleys, leaving him to contemplate the possibility of a nearing apocalyptic event. But, after that, Gabriel seemingly vanishes from Ulysses´ life, popping up only in strange, ghost-like visions. While only together for a few hours, the two live a lifetime together during that night, as if the world was about to end in mere moments. Ulysses goes on a date with Gabriel (Tyler Posey), a guy he randomly met online, and they both instantly feel an intense, almost cosmic connection between each other. However, the characters´ lives get increasingly weirder by the day, with the show´s version of the City of Angels feeling more and more like a hazy purgatory where modern reality and the supernatural increasingly step in and out of each other. In a sun-drenched, breezy L.A, we either spend time with them in unexpected nightly adventures, or lazy chats in daytime lounge-bars about what happened the previous night – a routine to which Now Apocalypse remains faithful in every episode, to the point where most of the events amount to a constant, dreamy sense of deja vu. ![]() Now Apocalypse follows the life of Ulysses, a charismatic slacker played confidently by Avan Jogia, and his group of friends: Ford (Beau Mirchoff), a loveable, bro-ey aspiring screenwriter who dresses like an EDM DJ, and Carly (Kelli Berglund), a struggling actress who pays her bills by webcamming on the side. This time, however, Araki trades teen angst for the lives of directionless twenty-somethings living in L.A, as they meander through dating apps, acting classes and unbreakable hangout routines – all with a faint sense of existential ennui and imminent doom right around the corner. Once again, we find Araki operating in greatest hits mode, with his authorial stamp being noticeable from the get-go: the prominence of queer characters, buzzy one-liners, awkward dream sequences, and even a shoegaze song playing as the title card appears on-screen in the first episode. Now Apocalypse is a ten-episode series created, directed and co-written (along with Karley Sciortino) by the Asian-American auteur. Nineteen years later, we now find Araki back on TV with full creative control, after directing a few episodes of popular series like Riverdale and Thirteen Reasons Why. Upon watching it now, one may wonder if Araki´s take on these ideas would have found its way into the pop culture zeitgeist, had the show been made, turning Araki into a mainstream generational icon. ![]() The series would have found the New Queer Cinema pioneer revisiting themes and specific motifs from his irreverent mid-90s Teen Apocalypse trilogy ( Totally Fucked Up, The Doom Generation and Nowhere), such as teen nihilism in America, sexuality and, of course, the sense of an impending apocalypse. Sadly, however, the pilot never made it on air, and the ambitious plans for the show fell through. In the year 2000, indie auteur Gregg Araki seemed poised for a huge TV break with T his is How The World Ends, a big budget project for MTV. ![]()
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