Kaboom
Feb 25 - Mar 03, 2011
(Gregg Araki, USA, 2010, 35mm, 86 min)
Seattle Premiere!
Sponsored by Seattle Gay News
An ambisexual college apocalypse thriller, Kaboom is the newest gender and genre-bending escapade from director Gregg Araki (Mysterious Skin). Winner of the inaugural Queer Palm, awarded to an LGBT film at the Cannes Film Festival, the film picks up the themes of Araki’s “Teen Apocalypse Trilogy” (Doom Generation, Totally Fucked Up and Nowhere) and takes them on a new journey in his own inimitable camp pop style.
Stunning blue-eyed Smith (Thomas Dekker) eats magic cookies one night and dreams of murder—or thinks he does. From lesbian witches to strange figures in creepy animal masks, the people in his dream keep appearing in his waking life. The super hot cast features Smith’s best friend Stella (Haley Bennett), his object-of-desire dumb surfer roommate (Chris Zylka) and the giddily lascivious Juno Temple as London. The chemistry is complete with Araki’s trademark interplay between music, story and visuals, a soundtrack featuring Interpol and Jesus & Mary Chain, and a score written by the Cocteau Twins' Robin Guthrie, performed by Ulrich Schnauss, Mark Peters and Vivek Maddala.
“The first great paranoid, dystopian sex comedy in the history of cinema” —Noah Cowan, Toronto International Film Festival
“Araki has made a more radical personal and political film than the bombastic Stone could have managed in his wettest of wet dreams.” —Matthew L. Severson, Bright Lights
“Araki has now re-embraced the ludicrously overheated, unapologetically salacious shock comedies he made back in the 90s…Turns out maturity + technical skill + deliberate regression = awesome.” —Mike D'Angelo, AV Club
"Funny and entertaining...Gregg Araki’s Kaboom has it all" —The Stranger
"Both crazily disjunctive and smooth, jumping from polymorphous sex comedy to murder mystery to paranoid apocalyptic science-fiction freakout, with nimble nonchalance and up-to-the-minute pop-music cues." —Seattle Times
Watch the trailer:
