About a decade or so ago if I had been asked who my favorite directors were, Gregg Araki might've been one of the names I rattled off. For a certain period time during the 90s, he was making comedies everybody else was afraid to make. While Hollywood was flooding the big screen with similar looking teen comedies about nothing, Araki was giving us his controversial "Teenage Apocalypse" trilogy. My favorite of those flicks was Nowhere
, a crazy mish-mash of sexual/social stereotypes, intense violence, and extreme fornication, all wrapped in a weird science fiction coating. Since then, Araki has made a couple of attempts at going mainstream(most notably 1999's Splendor
), but found real critical success with 2004's Mysterious Skin
. Kaboom marks a return to the sex-fueled, subversive style we've come to expect from Araki, but now with so many years passed the formula feels terribly out of date and derivative. Thomas Dekker(The Sarah Connor Chronicles
) is Smith, an 18 year old college student. Like all of Araki's protagonists, Smith is defined by his sexuality, which in this case is "undeclared". He sleeps with whoever he wants regardless of gender. His best friend, Stella(Haley Bennett) is a foul-mouthed lesbian caught up in a dangerous sexual relationship with a witch. Yeah, a witch. Like in The Craft. Smith is in lust with his roommate, a shirtless slab of beef surfer stereotype named Thor(like the God, he explains). This doesn't stop Smith from having frequent sexual trysts with London(a steamy Juno Temple), who hops from partner to partner like a game of musical chairs.Smith starts having weird dreams about two women, one a gorgeous red haired girl(sorta like Charlie Brown does). The women soon start appearing in real life, and one day while high on too much Ecstasy he sees one of them murdered by what appear to be aliens. Is he crazy, or is the world in some serious sh*t?
It sounds like Nowhere all over again, which is both a good and bad thing. The script is as quick and biting as ever. All of Araki's characters have their own snappy language. Think Joss Whedon, only filthier. The problem is that Araki clearly only scares about watching these characters screw eachother silly, so why bother with all the other crap? There's not even a ghost of an attempt to make the sci-fi stuff make sense. While Nowhere remains my favorite Araki film, the most complete movies he's made are the ones that leave the nonsense on the cutting room floor.
