KABOOM
Written & Directed by Gregg Araki
Produced by Araki & Andrea Sperling
Released by IFC Films
USA/France. 86 min. Not Rated
With Thomas Dekker, Haley Bennett, Chris Zylka, Roxane Mesquida, Juno Temple, Andy Fischer-Price, Nicole LaLiberte, Jason Olive, James Duval, Brennan Mejia & Kelly Lynch
 

Gregg Araki takes further steps away from the strides he made in 2005’s ambitious and disturbing Mysterious Skin. That emotionally probing film marked a huge departure—Araki took his characters seriously. After the stoner odyssey of 2007’s Smiley Face and now this, you get the feeling that this is a return to what’s near and dear to his heart: young adults with ephemeral ties fighting off adulthood. Embracing teenage abandonment full-on, Araki has settled back into the druggy and always-sunny Southern California of perpetual erections. Directing from his patchwork script, he basks in his low budget (some of the threadbare sets looked borrowed from a high school production of Bye Bye Birdie) and the deliberately stiff acting. But then again, most of the characters are so deadpan that what’s supposed to be cool comes off as inert.

If The Doom Generation from 1995 was “a heterosexual movie,” as its opening credits mockingly proclaimed, then Araki’s Kaboom is defiantly ambisexual. With the looks of an emo choirboy in skinny jeans, film studies freshman Smith (Thomas Dekker) has a pretty-boy blankness. Not identifying as gay or straight, he leans toward the label “undeclared” and shares his college dorm room with a not-so-bright blond surfer of an ambiguous (or at least open minded) sexuality—Smith’s wet fantasy is straight out of either Penthouse Forum or First Hand, have your pick. Meanwhile, he pines for a shy guy seen from afar at a party, occasionally sleeps with the authoritative and blunt London, and wonders if he has hallucinated seeing a woman murdered by men wearing animal masks and why he has received the anonymous note, “You are the chosen one.” Occasionally, he studies; otherwise he’s off to the nude beach before class.   

Like characters in the latest young adult dystopian novels, Smith faces a secretive, gathering dark force, but Araki overloads the script with a supernatural stalker, a dead girl in a dumpster, an apocalyptic messiah, and World War III, the total of which outstays the running time by a good 10 minutes. The plot, to quote Smith’s best friend, vagitarian (lesbian + vegetarian) Stella, is “nuttier than squirrel shit.” Kaboom loses its hard-on and becomes totally paranoid, careening from the carefree to the humdrum. What lies behind Smith’s accumulating nightmares aren’t dangerous or weird enough. (Stella’s definition of dreams: “your brain taking a dump at the end of the day.” The one-liners, especially hers, feel more labored than in the past.) And we’re never sure how seriously to read the omens. Instead, we’re left waiting for the next unexpected hook-up.

Araki’s fresh and frank sex scenes have been more memorable than his dialogue. It’s in the sack where the film cuts loose, where the characters loose their aloof attitudes and the only honest moments in the otherwise glib gabfest occur, thanks in huge part to the film’s bedroom siren-as-sex tutor. London can bend the Kinsey scale every which way. Whatever the producers paid Juno Temple, it isn’t enough. The least self-conscious in the cast, she speaks Araki’s dialogue without the invisible air quotes. The rest of the cast is flaccid compared to her. Kent Turner
January 28, 2011