A real mixed bag this one. Gregg Araki’s latest is one part a romp though various sexual awakenings and the trials and tribulations of entering manhood, whilst the other is a thriller involving an underground cult and the mysterious goings-on on the same campus. It’s not hard to see which area works and which doesn’t.
Thomas Dekker plays Smith, a student about to reach his 19th birthday who is forced to share his room with the obnoxious jock Thor (Chris Zylka) whilst drowning in a sea of debauched adventures as his best friend Stella (Hayley Bennett) tries to dump her ‘witch’ girlfriend. Unlike other college kids, Smith is plagued by vivid “dreams” involving the murder of a mysterious red-head, assailants in animal masks and the confusion surrounding his father’s death and he takes it upon himself to work out the truth.
The film is quite clearly disjointed in its themes, so it’s not doing the film a disservice in analysing them separately. Although the ‘college drama’ (to undersell it) side of things veers dangerously on the boundary of gratuity with prolonged and unnecessary sex scenes whilst the dialogue is one ‘totally’ or ‘super’ away from being a Diablo Cody production, there’s a rather warm undercurrent to it. The friendship between Smith and Stella is thoroughly convincing whilst Thor is a rare exception as the stereotypical surfer dude who actually provides some laughs – it’s hard not to raise a smile when Smith walks into his room and sees Thor naked and upside down, trying to blow himself. There’s a decent little story trying to break out of its box here and had Araki concentrated more here, Kaboom could have been all the more watchable.
Which makes the attempts to turn this into a drama dealing with cults and the underworld all the more disappointing. The initial attacks featuring those in animal masks is undeniably unnerving, but the suspense drops dramatically as the film progresses and becomes even more farcical. The setting doesn’t work, as the vibrant college and excess levels means that any attempts to introduce the cult seem horrendously tacked on and the film could so easily be taken as a black comedy if the actors didn’t seem so po-faced about it. The whole concept of a secret underground cult is rather outdated, a feeling punctuated by the use of Placebo towards the films horrifically overcooked finale, and Kaboom does little else than to accentuate this belief- the twists are highly unnecessary and serve such little purpose that when the reveals are made, the audience simply won’t be bothered. Additionally, it’s hard to remember a character which is built up as heavily yet amounts to as little as Lorelei, Stella’s romantic interest, who serves to be utterly redundant and completely dispensable, ensuring that Kaboom is lazy as well as infuriating.
Allegedly it was John Waters who convinced Araki to make this, so perhaps he should be blamed for the sorry mess. Indeed, the only thing that keeps Kaboom’s head slightly above water is that one portion of it is quite good if not remarkable but the story was looking for a direction, and it took ultimately the wrong one, coming across like an after hours version of Sabrina the Teenage Witch rather than the mind-bending revelation it’s searching for (yet misses completely). A hollow watch, Kaboom is unnecessary and out of fashion.