The Living End

Dir. Gregg Araki
Starring Mike Dytri, Craig Gilmore, and Mark Finch
92 minutes.

Araki’s The Living End (1992) premiered at the Sundance Film festival and became synonymous with a movement coined by scholar B. Ruby Rich as the New Queer Cinema.

When the young-adult film critic Jon (Craig Gilmore) learns that he is HIV-positive, he runs across a HIV-positive hustler Luke (Mike Dytri), who has just escaped the clutches of serial-killer lesbians. Unsure what to do with the little life they feel they have remaining, the pair embarks on a love-fueled road trip/crime spree. Exploring the emotional experience of fear, loss, and uncertainty that come with a diagnosis of HIV, The Living End humorously and honestly tackles the effects of the disease on Generation X.