Damning with Faint Praise: KABOOM

Smith (Thomas Dekker) is a gay college kid with a straight roommate and a lesbian best friend.

One night at a party he takes a bunch of drugs.

As he staggers home, he sees a woman murdered by a bunch of guys in rubber animal masks.

He thinks.

He can’t really be sure. The next day, he can’t find any evidence of the crime. He doesn’t see any newspaper reports about a body being found.

When his relationships and his classes permit, Smith looks into the bizarre occurrence, and the entire fabric of his life unravels.

Verdict
This movie wants to be a lot of things, and comes close to a couple of them.

First off, Kaboom wants to be a film noir.

Smith has a lot of questions about his father and his past. Like everyone his age, he’s exploring his sexuality and his identity. He is a seeker. His situation becomes more desperate as the film goes on, but he doesn’t make choices from any moral system, much less a nihilistic one.

In this, first, section of the movie, what quickly becomes irritating is the lack of conflict. Smith’s friend, Stella (Haley Bennett), has far more conflict, thanks to Lorelei (Roxane Mesquida), the lover that Stella can’t get rid of.

For his part, Smith just stumbles along, trying to get laid and otherwise being a typical college student. For all his talk of classes and tests, we never see him in any of them.

As far as the erotic aspect of noir goes, Kaboom mistakes sex and nudity for eroticism. There is a fair amount of both.

The movie lacks the visual approaches of classic film noir (low-key lighting, strong use of light and shadow, unusual camera placement), but has a strong visual style of its own.

The reason that Stella can’t get rid of Lorelei is because Lorelei is a witch.

No. Really. Kaboom also wants to be a sexy supernatural movie.

Unfortunately, nothing in the context up to that point prepares us for the existence of magic, psychic powers, or witchcraft. Initially, in fact, it’s not clear whether Stella is hallucinating or actually experiencing the effects of magic.

Even more unfortunate, the movie can’t be bothered to expand the context to include such things. We get nothing about where this stuff comes from until a lengthy exposition sequence during a car chase in Act III.

Then there is the apocalyptic sci-fi movie aspect.

The ending of the movie feels rushed. The context expands and changes as Smith realizes what is really happening, but the movie doesn’t give it time to come to a satisfactory conclusion.

The true nature of Smith’s conflict comes too late for him to do anything about it, one way or another.

There are a few lessons here for storytellers.

First, when you create a character, you must know the character’s greatest fear and greatest desire. You must find a way to let the audience know what those things are.

The climax of your story should come, for that character, when it must overcome its greatest fear to achieve its greatest desire.

In Smith’s case, his greatest desire might be to discover the true identity of his father, or it might be discovering his own identity.

If he has a greatest fear, we don’t know it. The movie hits its climax and then ends.

Yes, I did phrase it that way on purpose. The best way to watch this movie is with your mind firmly in the gutter.

Second, your main character must have a chance to do something about the conflict, even if that is just running away from the conflict.

Without that, the audience will finish your story feeling like you wasted all your time, and theirs, establishing character and context without actually telling a story.

Conclusion
Writer/director Gregg Araki has done some cool stuff, including Mysterious Skin and Smiley Face. Kaboom, however, is worth a miss.