Kaboom (2010)
Directed by Gregg Araki
Smith, a typical young college student who likes partying and engaging in acts of random sex and debauchery, has been having some interesting dreams revolving around two gorgeous women -- and is shocked when he meets the dream girls in real life. Lorelei looks just like his fantasy brunette, while a mysterious red-haired girl being chased by assassins draws him into an international conspiracy. Or is it all just a drug-induced hallucination?
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And hey, that's good to know since Smith tells us that the idea of moviegoing will probably be dead in a few years -- a view accompanied by scenes from Bunuel's Un Chien Andalou .
A clip from Bunuel’s Un Chien Andalou – the straight razor slicing an eye open – plays out in successive gross-out scenes: A close-up of Smith having his shoes vomited on in the club; then later, our pretty hero stepping into dog leavings.
Kaboom lives somewhere between that surrealist classic and Donnie Darko .
For his latest effort, the Skittles-colored "Kaboom," Araki not only reverts back to his old ways, but goes one notch lower with the kind of snarky, disingenuous filmmaking an amateur might create who's seen 2001's " Donnie Darko " far too many times.
It has similarities to Richard Kelly's great “Donnie Darko” (with which it shares a few plot elements) and his significantly less great “Southland Tales,” but Araki keeps his ambitions more modest.
It isn’t exactly irrelevant that the world is ending, a headless corpse has been discovered in a dumpster and Smith is being stalked by men in animal masks (a bit of an in-joke alongside Araki regular James Duval, who also played Frank, the six-foot rabbit in Donnie Darko (2001), another teen-centred movie with an apocalyptic bent).
The challenge of “Kaboom” will be to hold together even when it feels like some crazy mutation of “Donnie Darko,” “Juno” and “Scott Pilgrim vs. the World.”
Throw in occasionally striking pop art visuals, an animal-mask sporting cult and apocalyptic conspiracy theories and the ingredients are in place for a hipster Donnie Darko.
Writer-director Gregg Araki, he of a slew of sexually polymorphic, '90s-set portraits of teenage disaffection1994's "Totally F***ed Up," 1995's "The Doom Generation," and 1997's "Nowhere"finally branched out in recent years with 2005's altogether more cohesive and mature drama " Mysterious Skin " and 2007's loopy Anna Faris-starring pot comedy "Smiley Face."
Having made his ‘Teenage Apocalypse‘ trilogy – Totally F***ed Up (1993), The Doom Generation (1995) and Nowhere (1997) – Araki addresses in Kaboom a literal apocalypse.
The series will also show Nowhere (1997), the Valley Girl meditation Araki famously described as “Beverly Hills 90210 on acid,” as well as the spiked-cupcake comedy Smiley Face (2007), with Ana Faris and John Krasinski.
He's explored all manner of genre - road movies (The Living End), black comedies (The Doom Generation), soaps (Nowhere) - but disaffected youth, clocking in at every point of the Kinsey Scale, are always at the fore.