Nowhere.

Director-writer-editor Gregg Araki ends his "Teen Apocalypse" trilogy (which began with Totally F***ed Up and The Doom Generation) with the resounding, kaleidoscopic bang of Nowhere, a film that should cement his reputation as a bold visual stylist and one of America's most amusing chroniclers of adolescent angst. Viewers who can tune their mental dials to the filmmaker's wavelength are likely to marvel at his ability to pile on the excess with hair-raising exuberance, then extract from the rubble images of startling beauty and nuggets of genuine feeling.

With enough characters to fill two Robert Altman movies, Nowhere depicts a day in the lives of a racially, ethinically, and sexually diverse group of Los Angeles teens whose sense of freedom springs from the shared conviction that they were born to witness the end of the world. Principal among them is the sensitive Dark (James Duval), a film student. When he's not editing his video or suffering because his true love, Mel (Rachel True), doesn't see the point of being with him exclusively--among her other lovers is a purple-haired girlfriend, Lucifer (Kathleen Robertson)--Dark fantasizes about the angelic-looking Montgomery (Nathan Bexton).

Dark isn't the on& character whose sexual identity depends on what tune it is, nor is he the only one with problems. His best friend, Cowboy (Guillermo Diaz), is losing his band-mate/ boyfriend to drugs; Egg (Sarah Lassez) makes the fatal mistake of succumbing to the Teen Idol (Jaason Simmons of TV's Baywatch); Dingbat (Christina Applegate) has a crush on Ducky (Scott Caan), who has the hots for Alyssa (Jordan Ladd), who has eyes only for Elvis (Thyme Lewis). But at least they haven't been vaporized by the lizard-like alien Dark encounters everywhere he goes.

As in Araki's other films, Nowhere has its share of visceral violence, hallucinogenic reveries, electric sexual pairings, and cameo appearances, this time by a group that includes Beverly D'Angelo, John Ritter, Traci Lords, Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surfers, Sharmen Doherty, and selected sitcom survivors. What gives Nowhere its identity is not only its stunning visual design (Arturo Smith is director of photography) but also the way in which Duval keeps the movie in emotional focus.

Nowhere may seem like a crazy quilt into which anything can be sewn, but Araki's sense of perspective is solid. The film works because it conjures up what being 18 feels like at its anarchic, frightening, funny, achingly romantic extreme.