Review: 'Kaboom' is incompetent, absurd

"Kaboom" is one of those films with a wildly complex plot that's over-ridden by wholly irrelevant sex scenes.

Most films like this turn out to be pretty flimsy and ultimately disappointing. Count "Kaboom" in that number. Maybe its incompetence and absurdity are supposed to evoke laughter. They don't.

Writer-director Greg Araki has a history of getting talented young people to perform in his "experiments."

In 2004's "Mysterious Skin," he used (abused) Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Michelle Trachtenberg. Here he's got the promising trio of Thomas Dekker ("Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles"), Haley Bennett ("Music and Lyrics") and Juno Temple ("Notes on a Scandal," "Atonement"). All have done and will do better work.

Dekker plays bi-sexual college frosh Smith, best friend to Bennett's acerbic lesbian-in-learning Stella, and sometime playmate with Temple's sexual dynamo, London.

You know something's weird when Stella has an affair with a witch early on; it's for sure weird when a bunch of guys wearing masks murder a lovely redhead in front of Smith one night.

What's going on? Who cares? Seriously, Araki mostly concentrates on the trade-partners sex scenes and too-clever dialogue for most of the movie.

But eventually it turns out there's a huge underground cult quietly controlling the world, and they're about to blow it up. Luckily/unluckily for Smith and London, they unknowingly have ties to this cult.

Araki waits until a final car chase scene to explain — and explain — what all this means, shoving two hours of bad plot into five minutes of bad exposition, then the movie ends.

You'll be glad. That it's ended, that is. Not that you watched it.

'Kaboom'

GRADE: D

Not rated

Running time: 86 minutes

tlong@detnews.com

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