---
title: "The Living End (1992) review"
description: "Bonnie and Clyde for the gays. Made in the year AIDS became the number one killer of young American men."
url: https://www.joekarlsson.com/reviews/the-living-end/
---

![A still from The Living End (1992)](https://www.joekarlsson.com/images/reviews/the-living-end/backdrop.webp)

# The Living End (1992)

Aug 7, 2026 | 2 min read | Rated 3.5 out of 5 | Dir. Gregg Araki

Bonnie and Clyde for the gays. Made in the year AIDS became the number one killer of young American men.

I’ve been on a Gregg Araki binge the last couple weeks, and I’ve been loving it. He makes punk films for the gays. He’s extremely good at deploying anger and rage to give voice to an underrepresented group - and in 1992, when this film came out, that rage was more than justified. This was the peak of the AIDS crisis. The gay community was receiving no help from the federal government. Reagan hadn’t even said the word “AIDS” publicly until 1987. Bush called it “behavioral” - blamed the victims. ACT UP activists were dumping the ashes of their dead lovers on the White House lawn the same year this movie premiered.

I get the anger. I’d be furious. This generation of gays didn’t ask for any of this. They inherited a curse. Contracting HIV in 1992 probably did feel like a death sentence. This movie gives a voice and an outlet for that rage - a direction to point the gun.

The film has some clunky dialogue and a tiny budget, but Araki really does know how to shoot. The shadows, the darkness, the deployment of film cameras with no money - it works. Plus the leads are really hot. Craig Gilmore as the uptight film critic who just got his diagnosis. Mike Dytri as the reckless drifter who’s already made peace with dying. The chemistry crackles.

And then there’s the ending. Somehow this has been one of the few movies where everyone survives - and it’s sadder than any of the other movies I’ve seen where they don’t. I’m still sitting with that. Maybe it’s because survival here doesn’t mean hope. It just means more time in a country that wants you dead. The film ends with a dedication to “craig lee (1954-1991) and the hundreds of thousands who’ve died and the hundreds of thousands more who will die because of a big white house full of republican fuckheads.”

That’s 1992. That’s the moment. Araki captured it and handed it a weapon

Also on [Letterboxd](https://letterboxd.com/joekarlsson/film/the-living-end/)

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Karlsson

I write about my homelab, AI tools, databases, and the weird stuff I build on the side.

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