Robert Horton is a Scarecrow board member and a longtime film critic. This series of "critic's notes" is chance to highlight worthy films playing locally and connect them to the riches of Scarecrow's collection.
The Northwest Film Forum has been playing a revival of Gregg Araki's Nowhere (1997), a welcome return from a key '90s indie player. I can't find my review of that, nor of an interview I did with Araki sometime in that decade, although I have a distinct memory of sharing pizza with him while sitting on the grass across the street from the Egyptian theatre back then. So here's a 2011 review of Araki's Kaboom, originally published in The Herald, complete with reference to the deservedly forgotten flop I Am Number Four.
Hints of the "end of days" come in all shapes in sizes—none more cheerfully garish than Gregg Araki's Kaboom, a smiley-face indie account of some very odd things happening.
At first glance, we seem to be in familiar territory for the director of The Living End and The Doom Generation: a story of young people bed-hopping with a variety of partners. The hero is Smith (Thomas Dekker), a wispy bisexual who daydreams about his dorm roommate (Chris Zylka) but has a fling with a co-ed (Juno Temple).
He tells his best friend Stella (Haley Bennett) about these unsettling visions he's been having lately, which seem to be coming true. One of them involves Stella's new girlfriend (Roxane Mesquida), a sultry type who, like the hero of last week's I Am Number Four, is able to shoot light beams out of the palms of her hands. And then there's the night Smith spots people in animal masks roaming across campus, just before a classmate turns up dead. Are these failed auditioners for the Donnie Darko sequel, or has Smith come across some really bizarre harbinger of doom?
The answers to these questions tumble out across a candy-colored series of scenes, strung together with a busy soundtrack of drop-dead cool songs. Araki is a magpie when it comes to collecting great sounds and costumes and bits of lingo, and he loves smashing them together in a jangly mix.
Make no mistake: while Kaboom has a certain underground-movie rattiness, it moves along with confidence and authority. Araki knows how to flip one scene into the next and build suspense, even if the movie's main tone is comic. The ending may leave people wanting more, me included. I realize the entire movie is built around a particular ending—but still.
Also, Thomas Dekker, probably best known for the TV series Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, doesn't quite have the heft to give this wacky outing a strong central spine. Haley Bennett and Juno Temple have a good time spitting out the one-liners, and James Duval is a hoot as the dorm's Resident Advisor, so stoned he does everything but quote Cheech and Chong routines.
Independent films have gotten into something of a rut in recent years, all decent and respectable and Oscar-nominated. One thing to say for Kaboom: there's nothing decent or respectable about it, and that is oddly welcome.
October 27, 2023
