Featuring a gorgeous young cast, Kaboom is a hyper-stylized ”Twin Peaks” for the Coachella Generation and tells the story of Smith (Thomas Dekker), an ambisexual 18-year-old college freshman who stumbles upon a monstrous conspiracy in a seemingly idyllic Southern California seaside town. Smith’s everyday life in the dorms – hanging out with his arty, sarcastic best friend Stella (Haley Bennett,) hooking up with a beautiful free spirit named London (Juno Temple,) lusting for his gorgeous but dim surfer roommate Thor (Chris Zylka) – all gets turned upside-down after one fateful, terrifying night
Never underestimate the influence of John Waters. Apparently, he mentioned to Gregg Araki that, while he admired Araki’s recent, more serious films like Mysterious Skin, he really missed the questionable taste and confrontational panache of films like The Doom Generation and Totally F***ed Up. From that conversation Kaboom was born, and it does indeed share key touchstones with Araki’s earlier films, including scatological and absurd Valley-inflected dialogue, elements of campy gore and Araki’s troupe of arrestingly sexy guys and girls. But Kaboom also feels like a stealthily sophisticated synthesis of Araki’s various experiments in tone and cinematography, a product of someone hitting their prime as a radical, independent artist.
Any attempt to walk through a conventional plot synopsis for Kaboom feels like a feeble exercise. One could say that it concerns a sex-crazed bisexual college boy plunging headlong into a supernatural world of demons, cults, human sacrifice and potential Armageddon. But the film ultimately ends up being about, and existing in, a borderline psychotic, psychosexually-hyperactive imaginary universe that feels absolutely real and true – not so much prescient as an alternate version of reality. The film’s often chilling, drug-saturated paranoia (even we audience members start looking over our shoulders) makes the film feel like a mélange of The Manchurian Candidate and Liquid Sky.
What matters about Kaboom, other than its exceptional directorial control of outrageously over-the-top material, is that Araki is able to reveal beautiful moments of human emotion against the backdrop of a manic tableau. Great sadness and joy inflect even the silliest of scenes; the confusion and pain of the onset of adulthood is felt deeply throughout, and Araki evokes just the right amount of wistfulness for a more carefree time.
Directed by: Gregg Araki
Starring: Haley Bennett, Thomas Dekker, James Duval, Andy Fischer-Price, Brandy Futch
Screenplay by: Gregg Araki
MPAA Rating: None.
Studio: IFC Films
Release Date: January 28th, 2011
