Smith's everyday life in college consists of: hanging out with his artsy, sarcastic best friend Stella, hooking up with a beautiful free spirit named London, and lusting for his gorgeous but dim surfer roommate Thor But it all gets turned upside-down after one fateful, terrifying night, when a reoccurring dream becomes a bleak reality, and he starts having visions of a dystopian nature.Araki movies are an acquired taste, you either get them and appreciate their beauty, or you get on the bandwagon of people who cannot stomach certain things and dismiss it as rubbish.Out of all the Araki movies, this has to be his most accessible, and it's very intriguing from beginning to end. The opening shot is very reminiscent of something that David Lynch would do, and the film does have a very Mulholland Drive feel about it.As his films do, it gets very bonkers toward the end, and you do have to suspend belief come the very end, but the film has such a cool laid back lizard feel to it, that you cannot help but get sucked in to his vision.Not all will appreciate his work, but I really enjoyed this.

Smith (Thomas Dekker) is an 18-year old university student majoring in film studies that is having both weird and wet dreams, right before his 19th birthday. After a series of hook-ups and seemingly random sexual encounters, things are really starting to get crazy: Men in animal masks appear, a creepy girl with superpowers and a voodoo doll and of course all kinds of sexy sex. After a couple of days of confusion and meaningless sex, Smith however starts to realize what's going on, but is he in time to save the world from its impending doom and an evil cult leader determined blow it up?Kaboom is a charming film, beautifully shot in bright, saturated colors, that supply almost feel too fake to be true. Yet, strangely the film provides a wholly immersive experience, probably fueled by Araki's intuitive and appropriate use of shoegaze. Much like Sofia Coppola, another fan of the genre, Gregg Araki allows you to really feel the film. The dialogue doesn't always come through like you'd want and feels scripted and clichéd in some instances, but it's always funny and quotable. Gregg seems to be winking at the audience, acknowledging and fully embracing the silliness of the story. That's partly why I can forgive some of movie's obvious flaws.Thomas Dekker, the leading man of this picture, does a fine job most of the time and I couldn't imagine this film without it; however he seems to be trying too hard in some scenes, bordering the line of over-acting, you can see his acting. While it's a bit distracting, the supporting cast, with Araki regular James Duval as the ridiculously named Messiah, does a fantastic job of making you forgive him. Another minor distraction is the use of purposely bad transitions; I'm more of a fan of the traditional fade to black, but it adds to the quirky spirit of the film, which I'm all for. It is in fact more than anything it's the films' goodhearted nature and sweetness I take away and remember most fondly.Reliving all these emotions for the third time, this is one of my favorite films, I noticed a lot of new things. Some of the scenes are really "useless", in that they don't help forwarding the plot, but are mostly there to be funny and help creating a mood. That's partly where the appeal of the film lies for me: It's not so much plot driven as it is a portrayal of the college experience and what it means to be a young adult, a transitional stage between "high-school and the rest of your life" as one of the character puts it. In that regard the movie succeeds completely, because it really captures what it's like to 'feel lost'.Gregg Araki's very personal piece, once again he's a master of his sub-genre, while making a statement on the future of film, and blending different genres for a highly satisfying experience. Kaboom won the first ever Queer Palm at the Cannes Film Festival and is indeed recommended for fans of his other work, if you like unique and unusual films or if you just want to see the only car chasing sequence ever playing to shoegaze.

While it has been said that there are 12(?) essential plot lines (and Shakespeare covered them all) there are those stories that seem hard to categorise. For me, at least, a good story is one where you wish to keep watching/reading/listening in order to know what happens next. And good film making is where the you want to keep watching in order to know what happens, as well as having the visual impact to make it worthwhile. Writing as an over-50, I watched Kaboom with no idea of what the film was about (or even the title actually). The first 20 minutes did not grab me (college flick) but I could see that this film was not what it purported to be. Slowly the story develops, and with hints of weirdness the characters are exposed and revealed. After 30 minutes I was intrigued as there was something hinted at that I wanted to see developed. After 40 minutes I was hooked, and the last 20 minutes were a movie drug. This is not 'conventional' film making, rather it is exposition, development and denouement all mixed up. It is meant to be unclear (though the end brings it all together), it is meant to be sexually challenging, it is meant not to be stereotypical. Had someone told me the story (college kids, sex/gay, blah-blah-blah) I would have told him/her to get a life. Instead, I was treated to an unusual, entertaining, challenging story that made me shout out at the end. Not for the Hollywood/Disney audience. Well done to Gregg Araki.

I am SICK of guys who look like Thomas Dekker: pale, androgynous, black-haired pretty boys with stubble and stringy hair hanging in front of their eyes. There must be a factory somewhere that cranks them out like Edsels. This might have been an interesting movie if Araki had made him shave and wash his hair.Certainly the idea of an Araki horror movie is intriguing, and maybe he'll try again in a few years after the tiresome stubble/messy hair craze has died (Isn't it dead YET?!). I did manage to get through the movie, but it was not as good as it could have been with a different star, or with the same star after a shampoo and shave. His acting is fine; it's his look that seems about ten years out of date and is so tiresome it's distracting.