Weird Wednesdays: How Gregg Araki’s Lit Fuse Goes KABOOM!

This screening was part of the Alamo Drafthouse’s Weird Wednesday series. For upcoming shows, click here.

I had first experienced Gregg Araki’s Kaboom a year after its release in the annals of HBO on yet another unsupervised Saturday night, always excited to add a sex comedy to my ever-growing roster as a budding weirdo and connoisseur of adult film. It did not get much more adult than this, an opening shot of a skinny, nude twink full-frontal narrating an intense Wonderland-esque nightmare is just the beginning of “being eighteen and perpetually horny”. 

Here the audience is introduced to Smith (Thomas Dekker), a discouraged film major, his views through the lens both narcissistic and naive, a familiar feeling of Araki Universe, with neon hues of blue and pink (intentionally incredibly bisexual!) and chiaroscuro layered between confused college fresh-they (no freshmen here, but plenty of fresh people!) navigating the trenches of life and all the fumbles that come with it, mainly meeting other people and establishing any sort of basic human connection and how messy that can be -  the trials and tribulations of being young and bi and in love with different people every day, including Smith’s surfer boy roommate Thor (Chris Zylka), whose attempts at trying to fellate himself and taste his own semen lovingly nods to John Cameron Mitchell’s Shortbus, another film that spends its time focusing on individual characters and a true flesh-out of their personas.

Navigating the difficulties of being bi in college on the cusp of nineteen and presenting a day to day of sex and walking around campus, Smith’s confidante Stella (Haley Bennett) joins him in his Romeo to Rosaline-esq woes of unrequited love at the student dining hall. Stella, his sapphic bestie is currently struggling to escape an obsessed ex-girlfriend witch and the fact that her fingers can bring the ultimate orgasm, with brightly lit to poor special effects of white splashed on fingers and mouths. Among Smith’s relationships is London, played by Juno Temple in a way that only she could with her short stature and feistiness for impatient desires when it comes to sex. London and Smith begin a physical relationship that keeps her chatter at bay, but never wholly present in the way we could really use Juno Temple. Smith chooses to pursue his nightmare red-haired girl (Nicole LaLiberte) to an actual end of the world climax. Soft-spoken and Araki favorite James Duval’s appearance here as the Messiah, the dorm RA and both the literal light of the earth, and singular driving force with all the answers in this and all Araki films feels both a comfort and a sense of completion to a messy, fumbly, sometimes funny, very raw time - much like the long edge before that big kaboom.

There are times when I’m not sure what this film wants to be, and if it is acknowledging that itself in its messiness - there’s a jumble of plot that presents a quirky, weird collegiate sex comedy, but takes steps back towards straight-to-dvd/Tubi territory - a murder cult subplot featuring hooded figures with animal masks who show up twice then never again. The lesbian witch who is able to evolve her powers the less she is on screen. Is the mystery woman real or isn’t she, and does it even actually matter at the end? Does any of it? 

What does work for this film is the sex of it all - even with teetering on pornography plot territory, Araki becomes more focused on every character he introduces on screen having their own specific climax, be it through loud moans and wide shots of flesh bouncing all over the screen, or through moments of realization about life, bringing halt to the existential woes of balancing class and ass - though when the film itself does not reach the same pinnacle in the story, that feels like the point. It’s an interesting decade turn film for Araki, usage of digital film and editing to be both serious in its horrors of human interaction (and murder-mystery subplot!) and satirical (and downright fun) in exploring how much more exciting life can be if you’re willing to broaden your horizons! 

Upon rewatch, learning that this was my first Araki gave me a shocking wake up that we all grow and become different people, and that that is greatly given in part to the people we meet and develop relationships with. They can be there to give us guidance through life, or just company on a lonely Wednesday night. Either way, there is a big kaboom to be felt in all of it, that feeling of buildup to the big moment, even if it’s small in retrospect. As a fan of Mr. Araki and his brilliant way of showing a world that is much like ours but slightly off - uncaring adults, prophetic dreams of a sexual nature, carelessly unsafe sex that feels like love, blood-splattered runs from truth and plot into the unknown, refusing to hold his audience’s hand as they grope in the dark, I am all the more thankful for it.

Gregg Araki Big Three (you didn’t ask for it but here it is anyway):

Smiley Face Sun

Mysterious Skin Moon

Doom Generation Rising

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