Now Apocalypse

Now Apocalypse is best when it’s fun and breezy (and yes, very very sexy), though it doesn’t cut as deep or feel as consistent as some of Araki’s most enduring films, it’s also a lighter, easier watch than some of his more provocative outings.

With its casual queerness, its tinfoil-hat doomsayers and its vague but pervasive mood of foreboding, Now Apocalypse fun-house-mirrors a world that has finally caught up to Araki. If ever there was a time for free-loving youths to party through their panic, then surely that moment is now.

Sure to perplex the hell out of anybody without previous exposure to Araki, Now Apocalypse is weird and funny and kinky and outlandish and utterly ridiculous. In short, it's the Arakiest.

Now Apocalypse is bizarre and will certainly be off-putting to many. For others, surely a smaller audience, there’s some titillating fun to be had in this guilty pleasure’s kinky weirdness.

After watching the first five episodes, I don’t recommend watching “Now Apocalypse” every week. I do suggest waiting to the end of the season and downloading the series in one sitting. Now Apocalypse plays like the kind of show that can only benefit from a decadent binge.

Now Apocalypse is equally as ambitious [as Kaboom], but not nearly as well executed. Where Araki and Sciortino do succeed, in addition to making sly, poignant commentary about power and relationships, is in subverting expectations, first in giving viewers a queer story that’s a bit fraught, but mostly fun.

Endearingly peculiar and energetic.

It often falls prey to the same problems that have undermined other series by filmmakers who spent decades working in self-contained theatrical features, and either don’t get that serialized TV is structurally a different animal, or else know and don’t really care. But there’s so much originality and audacity on display that even when the series isn’t working, it’s working. If it feels like it might be attuned to your vibe, and if you can stick with it long enough to get over whatever you expected it to be, it could grow on you.

Now Apocalypse, debuting March 10 on Starz after a Jan. 29 premiere at Sundance, pushes its tone of oddity to what will likely be the limits of many viewers’ patience, bringing several amiable performances to bear on a story that feels like a warmed-over rehash of sharper material.

Now Apocalypse is so focused on delaying whatever weird apocalyptic payoff it’s hiding that the early episodes never introduce an enticing, enlightening, or all that enjoyable story at all.