Sex, Drugs and WTF!
In the words of The Happy Mondays "You're twisting my melon man". It is the only thing I can say after experiencing, yes I did say experiencing, Gregg Araki's seriously strange "Kaboom" which could also be the sound of your head exploding once it's finished. It's a strange movie of sex, drugs and sci-fi with a jumping timeline, weird events, men in animal masks, hallucinations, nightmares, threesomes and did I mention sex. And it doesn't make sense, or at least in my totally sober state did not make sense one little bit which makes me wonder if you need to be stoned or drunk to watch it. But the daftest thing I enjoyed it, I have no idea what I've just watched is about but I am strangely glad I did.
I'm not even going to try and give you a synopsis because looking through the notes I scribbled down I find myself staring at an incoherent collection of different things which don't make sense. So what I will say is that the movie centres on teenager Smith, his best friend Stella, surfer roommate Thor and sex mad London as a well as a few others. There are issues of sexuality as Smith fancies Thor but enjoys having sex with London whilst also hooking up with a man called Hunter whilst Stella has a lesbian thing going on with the strange Lorelei. And whilst all this sexual angst is going on we also have strange dreams, men in animal masks, a mysterious red head who has disappeared and a stoner called the Messiah, oh and Smith's very strange dream about a corridor, a black door and a dumpster behind it.
Maybe if you've just read that you see some deeper meaning, some mystical connection to it all but to me it is a jumble of things. And that is for most what "Kaboom" comes across as with scenes going from sex to strange animal masked men in a blink of an eye. It tries to make sense of all which happens right at the end but your mind will be so scrambled that making sense of it is impossible. In fact if director and writer Gregg Araki had some deeper meaning it was totally lost on me to the point that I gave up trying to make sense of it all.
But the irony is that "Kaboom" is so strange and scattered that it is still strangely, even seductively entertaining. Are introduction to Smith and his roommate Thor is almost like some college comedy but then it has this strange out of body style to it. And that continues through out from when Smith meets London and ends up having sex with her to then meeting the strapping Hunter on a nudist beach. It almost goes beyond being quirkily deep and just being very strange and being so becomes amusing.
As for the acting, well it is part of the reason why you keep watching because Thomas Dekker as Smith, Haley Bennett as Stella, Juno Temple as London and Chris Zylka as Thor are such curiously vibrant characters that you want to watch them. It's hard to explain because none of them make much sense, they seem obsessed with sex especially Thor but there is something else, something strange which keeps you watching.
What this all boils down to is that I haven't got a clue what "Kaboom" is about and whilst I watched it till the credits ended it was still a strange, incoherent collection of things. But there is something which keeps you watching despite giving up on trying to make sense of it all and it has this almost quirky, seductive aspect for being so strange.
