Episode 021: Kaboom!
“A sexually "undeclared" college freshman's clairvoyant/prophetic dreams are the first sign that something very strange is going on involving his classmates -- with him at the center.”
This film actually premiered at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival and was awarded the Queer Palm award in its first ever year of being an award given at the festival for its contributions to lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender issues!
This week we are going to be reviewing Kaboom!, a 2010 film focusing on a group of college students during their sexual exploits and investigation into a mysterious cult. We haven’t had nearly enough college hijinx yet, and so we clearly need this in our lives to bring balance back to our reviews!
You can either listen to the podcast above, or you can read below for a majority of the transcript of the podcast! Now as always, our discussion will begin with a brief summary of the film followed by spoiler free thoughts and feelings. This will be followed by an in-depth discussion of some of the key plot points that occurred and we will then finish off with my overall rating of the film and a heads up about what we are looking at next time. If you have not had a chance to watch Kaboom! and don’t want to hear any spoilers, then please feel free to skip the detailed section and listen to it afterwards if you so wish.
So in my honest opinion, this film is a little batshit crazy! There is a mystery element to it at the start which will leave you kind of scratching your head but then we also have elements of the occult thrown in, as well as crazy conspiracy theories! Honestly at some points I felt like everything but the kitchen sink was being thrown into the film which made for a slightly confusing ride on my first watching.
This meant that for the first 15-20 minutes of the film it felt a little odd and I wasn’t sure this was the film for me, but then I did slowly get into the groove of things after this. Not sure if this was me finally accepting the type of film it was going to be and settling in for the ride, or if my stockholm syndrome just sets in really quickly! Let’s not put it to the test however eh!
One of the main strengths of this film is the likeability of its characters and how even if I am unable to fully follow the ‘plot’ of the film, I at least enjoy spending time with the people within the story. Although characters might appear one dimensional when we first meet them, we are exposed to quite a lot of facets to who they are during the film, and there are actually a lot of funny characters in here (or they at least have some humorous deliveries) which also keeps me on their side.
In terms of representation, our main character Smith is quite clear that his sexuality is undeclared since he is open to being intimate with both men and women, although there does seem to be a preference for men since it can be more raw & physical and less guesswork for him. I did really appreciate the fact that our main character doesn’t need to define who he is with a label since that doesn’t work for him, and that we actually see quite a lot of fluidity during the film in terms of sexuality. We are also not just stuck to male on male lovings either, with their being Smith's best friend Stella who goes through their own journey with a female companion throughout the film too!
Final Feelings and Recommendation
Now for recommending this to people, I would probably say that it's probably best for those who get a kick out of films that are a bit off the wall and unpredictable, or ones that try to be a bit experimental. This felt a little too, amateur or experimental for me, so clearly I am not young and hip enough any more!
Overall, I would say that this film is 4 out of 10 swish cultist robes. It took a while for me to get into the film, and although the characters were likeable I wasn’t a huge fan of how it played out in the end.
SPOILERS AHEAD
Now, just a reminder that at this point, I will be going into a more detailed analysis of the film which means there will be spoilers! If you haven’t managed to watch Kaboom! yet and you don’t want anything spoiled, then this is your last chance to avoid the discussion. Or you can go ahead and close the page, go watch the film and then come back afterwards to finish reading. I promise we won’t mind. Still here? Well then, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
So the film kicks off exactly as it means to go on, with some nudity! We have our main character giving a voice over to their dream as they walk naked down this white corridor with significant people in their life on either side of the hallway. Yet in this line-up of people, he passes two people he has never met before and it all ends in a mysterious black door that he just has to see behind. And behind the door? A red dumpster.
Then boom, the dream is over and we properly meet our main character setup. And as Smith is a typical 18 year old guy, he is always horny and seeks to jerk off whenever he has a spare 5 minutes. Yet before we can really get into the groove of that, the roommate comes back in all drunk. Seems there was a typical college party where everyone got crunk, got naked, and went for a swim, hence why he is just sitting naked on his bed. Roommate then starts asking what it’s like to be with a guy before they move closer and closer to each other, just about to kiss. And then….
….Kaboom! Got you twice with the same trick since it was another dream! And this time it plays out with the room mate coming back with a girl and fucking really loudly instead. Ah Thor, the blonde surfer dude who likes to sleep naked, is an actual surfer, is dumber than a box of rock, and who Smith currently has a massive crush on!
We then meet my favourite character in this, Stella. Smith’s best friend since 9th grade who takes no bullshit and tries to take sense into Smith around Thor being straight and he should get over it, even if Smith comes prepared with potential behaviours Thor has that could mean he is a lil bit fruity (or you know, someone that looks after his body!). I mean, to be fair Smith may have a point since he ends up walking in on Thor trying out flexibility exercises naked in an attempt for him to suck his own dick. Especially when he asks Smith if he has ever tasted his own cum (but just to be clear it's no-homo, he clarifies not a full load, but just like when you shoot extra hard and it gets into your mouth). Ummm, how did I end up getting that into today’s script ffs.
At the party Smith goes to that night, it turns out Stella has a new partner Loreli, who actually was in Smith's dream even though they have never met. At one point he ends up in the bathroom and runs into London who asks if he is gay (he’s not into conventional labels so no he is not) and she then is upfront and asks if he wants to fuck since she finds queer guys hot and they don’t make it all complicated. And I mean who can turn down such an invitation, so they hook up for the night and London is open about not being into the whole sleepover / breakfast in the morning thing and prefers to have her own space after sex, so she asks for his number and then tells him to leave instead of getting all snuggle heavy. Great on her for being clear about her boundaries!
Yet as Smith is walking back to his place, he ends up bumping into a girl who clearly needs help, and they end up running from people in animal masks before they are caught and she is stabbed in the head. And instead of anything else to resolve this, we cut to him having pancakes with Stella where she assumes he had a bit too much recreational substances and complains about the fact he pulled her away from a very sexy witch's bed. After searching the area from the night before again, Smith then researches the student directory and finds out her name is Madeline O’Hara before conducting the next piece of his detective work, phoning every fother mucker with that last name in the phone book! Hmm, maybe not so bright after all! When London comes round to destress from an upcoming test with a good orgasm, she spots the picture of the girl and seems to react to the mention of the animal masks, but that's a mystery for later on!
Stella and Lorin spend five hours doing it, talk about putting your witch powers to good use, which results in Stella phoning Smith to come rescue her, as a person can only take so much sex in one day! But before he gets there he has another run in with the weird masked people, and then spends time with Stella and London before they discover that there has been a discovery, a headless girl found in a dumpster. Well, at least we know what happened to our mystery girl now…..
A few weeks later, Smith has gone out to a nudist beach to try and unwind from all the weird shit that has been going on. He meets a very nice random man, who uses the classic line of come here often, before they both go to bang in the back of his van, as you do on random hookups. And poor Smith must be super gullible if he is asking mid-coitus if the guy does this often and he just believes it when he is told no. Like come on Smith, you are definitely not the first to be explored in this van and not the last either sweetie!
Smith comes back to the dorm and seems to interrupt, well, something between Thor and his pal as they were sitting about in their underwear. However they quickly move on to wrestling each other and calling each other fun little slurs like fag and homo. Ooft, Smith try to resist! And on top of that, Smith gets an unknown number sending over a video file who is wondering if they can get together sometime. Hmm, what a way to ask someone out by sending slightly stalkerish videos. Be still my heart! It’s at this point that Stella starts to push back on Lorelei and actually turns her down for ‘hanging out’ as she instead wants to finish working on her … art project? It’s a very fucking odd looking art project so maybe it does need someone pulling an all nighter. Whether or not she was lying, Loreli does not take this well and Stella is tormented by a dream of a voodoo doll being used to attack her. At least, we think it’s a dream….
While Smith and London are having lunch, she catches him checking out a guy (Thor’s wrestling buddy) and she calls him out for crushing on this guy and his neanderthal roommate. He gives the same suspicions from earlier and she actually makes an interesting point in return that straight guys are actually gayer than gay guys, due to the fact that they are in love with each other but they can’t suck each other’s dicks and so it makes them act in queer ways instead. It’s an interesting argument since society would enforce the idea that men can’t possibly show affection to one another and so it seems more than plausible that to deal with repressed love for each other, instead of showing normal levels of affection to any close friend, you act out in these really weird and queer-coded ways of tormenting each other.
London invites the guy over and asks if he has heard of the Kinsey Scale, a scale going from completely hetero- to homo-, to which he obviously says he is a boring ole zero. She asks if he wants to fuck and then goes into teaching mode with this boy calling him 14, saying she has had pelvic exams longer than he lasts, which his retort is the oh so original “she just felt so good”. Gahhh!
We also have some more pearls of wisdom from London when she teaches the straight boy eating her out that “It’s a vagina, not a bowl of spaghetti” and kindly offer him pointers on how to do it right. He takes offence at first but she rightly points out that maybe girls have been faking it to spare his fragile male ego, because we know that sadly that is going to generally be the case for a lot of women in society. After all this, she comes round to Smiths and asks if he wants to fuck, since if A fucks B, and B fucks C, then by proxy A and C have also fucked, so he gets to have slept with his crush in some passive way! Oh London, so clever and funny in her approaches.
Now a slight tangent from the plot in that there is an absolute cracker of a line when Stella finally breaks up with her girlfriend when she is asked if she is worried what may happen. She just deadpans back with “Does Mel Gibson hate jews?”. Absolute slam dunk of a comeback while also taking a swipe at such a problematic person!
And so we are at Smith’s 19th birthday! Stella gets him a gift and swings by for a while, and then London also gets him a nice little birthday surprise, a threesome with the guy from earlier that said he was a zero on the Kinsey Scale. Talk about getting your test results wrong. Then to round off the birthday, he has a concert with Stella and he then bumps into the mystery stalker guy who complains he never responded, to which Smith claims he did, and they settle things by swapping numbers and a kiss on the cheek. Ya know, this guy does seem to get a lot of action but to be fair he is fairly attractive so its not unbelievable that everyone wants to tap that.
There is a quick stop at a gas station as Smith needs to pee, and he runs into a girl that is the spitting image of the dead girl from the start of the film. It turns out she has no clue who he is and it's only when he mentions the animal masked men that she confirms she had a twin sister who was taken away by people in animal masks. Bloody hell, talk about one hell of a tangled mystery going on here.
While having birthday donuts with Stella, Smith asks how things are with Loreli. Although she says that maybe she was a bit preemptive ending things, one bite of the donut proves this wrong since it's all maggot infested. Hmm, me smells a witch I thinks! Stella decides the safest thing to do is stay in Smith's room that night, however at some point Loreli possesses our lead to warn Stella about daring to leave her. It all gets a bit intense, but thanks to random vandalism, specifically a magic 8 ball being thrown through the window, the possession spell snaps, and we can all go to bed with a heavy sense of fear!
Smith awakens to a mysterious message on his laptop and is guided to a website, where he sees some crazy new world cult BS, including a list of murdered ostracised members that contains the girl that kicked this whole adventure off! Yet he falls asleep and when he awakens it is all gone from the laptop. But he also confides to Stella that the website had a picture of the cult leader, and it looked like his dad. I do have to ask, how is it that Stella can deal with an ex-girlfriend who is a witch, but a cult is the step too far? Further adding to the madness contained within this film.
Cut to Smith’s mother exercising with her personal trainer before getting down to the filthy stuff when of course her son just has to call at that exact time. She is hilariously trying to brush him off with being in a meeting and eventually just dismisses his questions about his dad, saying it's for his own good not to know.
He has the naked dream again, but this time he sees his dad in a silver cowl and a book, so it’s off to the library because reading is fundamental! And while there he finds London reading the book. It seems that London knows quite a bit about the cult and admits her dad was a cult member who was then kidnapped by the animal masked people when she was young. To be honest, that is probably something you would never forget when growing up! So she admits she knew who he was and manufactured herself into his life, but everything since then has been genuine feelings. Hmmmm.
We then come back to Stella who is just brushing her teeth when a noise is heard and then bang! Crazy ex-girlfriend strikes again, this time in full exorcist mode with red eyes trying to strangle her, but like all witches, apparently a lil splash of water is enough to knock her to the floor screaming! At least Stella phones the police instead of just leaving her to die, yet when she goes to check on the body again, surprise surprise it’s no longer there! Ooooooooo!
Smith’s mother calls and tells him to drop whatever he is doing and to come home immediately, saying that they are listening and that he can’t even trust the police. How very ominous! But Smith and Stella drive up there anyway, all the while pondering over what Messiah, the typical campus stoner, said about him feeling that the end is coming and that it’s been getting more intense recently. Turns out that Smith’s dad was your typical cult leader, having loads of wifes cause that’s what cults are for it seems, letting men use women as they please! It even seems that London is Smith’s half sister, so I suppose for anyone looking to mark accidental incest of your bingo card, well, there ya go! At this point while we all recover from the shock, the animal masked fuckers come and kidnap both London and Smith, and even finally reveal who they are! Who would have guessed it would be Thor, his no-homo buddy, and the random guy from the beach!?
It is here that Messiah pops up and lets us know it’s Day Zero, the day the world ends! Stella quips that he needs to reduce his weed intake but we now find out that the stoner persona has been a cover and that he and Oliver are part of the resistance trying to stop the cult, and Rebecca Novak was also part of their gang. And Thor and his friends have been tracking and reporting back on Smith and London’s movements this entire time and are not kidnapping them to meet their father. Talk about a twist you didn’t see coming!
Now the last 10 minutes of this film kind of act like a massive info dump to try and clear up the confusion the film has thrown at you! It’s both funny with the breakneck speed of which I am trying to catch up on things as they are revealed, but also felt slightly insane with everything that takes place. A real throw it all at the wall since we are almost done moment if ever I saw one. So there is the cult that Smith’s father runs, it kidnaps people when they test positive for paranormal powers, and they either make it through the training or they don’t come out well like Loreli, and also there is prophecy based on Smith’s dad’s dreams of a nuclear holocaust that will happen on his son’s 19th birthday! Got all that? Great haha!
So during these final moments we have London headbutting Thor and kicking Rex’s ass, Messiah and Hunter have a gun fight as they drive alongside each other, and Oliver being involved in the gun fight with their mind powers! Like, what the hell!? And of course while all this is going on, nobody is keeping an eye on the road which ends up in us reaching the end of the road at the edge of the cliff. And the finale of the film is Father sitting looking at a big red button in a white room, before he decides to press it. Then Kaboom! The world explodes into chunks and we then go right to the credits with Placebo’s “Bitter End” now playing in full over the credits. Quite an absurdist way to end the film, but at this point I am more than conditioned to this!