FlashCallahan 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.

gavin6942 Smith's everyday life in the dorm -- hanging out with his arty, sarcastic best friend Stella, hooking up with a beautiful free spirit named London, lusting for his gorgeous but dim surfer roommate Thor -- all gets turned upside-down after one fateful, terrifying night.I watched this because it had James Duval, although his role is very small (he plays a pro-legalization Rastafarian). But it is also a Gregg Araki film ,so it was worth watching just for that.Araki made some of the great nihilistic films of the 1990s, including "Doom Generation" and "Nowhere". They may not be critical successes and may be a bit tarnished in retrospect, but they influenced me as a 90s teenager. With this film, it seems I have grown up but Araki has not.He is still focused on the sexuality of young people, particularly the line between homosexuality and heterosexuality... a line he likes to blur. This is very much a return to the sexual politics of "Doom Generation", though without the nihilism. Still the weirdness, without the despair. Worth a peek but hardly a winner.

Matt Kracht This is the second Gregg Araki film that I've tried to watch, and I hated it even more than the first (Doom Generation). For his fans, I'm sure this is going to be a positive experience, but I think that I will never, ever be a Gregg Araki fan.Most of this film is pointless sex scenes, sarcastic dialogue that desperately wants to be witty (and ends up trying way too hard), lecturing the audience, and gleefully indulging in independent film clichés. Perhaps the absolute worst part is the absolute pandering he does to disaffected teenagers.It's time for Araki to get a new schtick. I didn't like his style the first time I came into contact with it, and I figured maybe it was time to give him another chance. It's been 15 years since The Doom Generation, and he's still going on about the same crap. It makes me happy that I skipped everything between them.

gradyharp Gregg Araki continues his daring sojourn into the arena that other filmmakers avoid - frank sexual adventures of every kind, characters whose placement in the story is often like window dressing for effect, and yet out of it all comes a fascinating if at time discombobulating tale that appeals to a certain audience - and doesn't mind if the rest of the folks who don't approve of his antics even attend!The film follows the life of one Smith (Thomas Dekker) and his everyday life in the dorm - hanging out with his arty, sarcastic best friend Stella (Haley Bennett), hooking up with a beautiful free spirit named London (Juno Temple), lusting for his gorgeous but dim surfer roommate Thor (Chris Zylka). Smith parties, sleeps around with both men (Jason Olive, Andy Fischer-Price) and women in various combinations. He's bisexual, is about to turn 19 and is having strange dreams which seem to work their way into his life. There's gay sex, lesbian sex, witchcraft, men in animal masks, murder and some secret organization - it all gets turned upside-down after one fateful, terrifying night when all the signs of Smith's dreams seem to come together in a apocalyptic fusion that involves Smith's father (Michael James Spall), Smith's hedonistic mother (Kelly Lynch), and visits from the Messiah! It is a sci-fi story centered on the sexual awakening of a group of college students.Dekker somehow carries this film due to his skills as an actor but also his complete involvement in what is obviously Araki's secondary persona. It is a crazy film, rich in color, at many times ludicrous, and at other times very sexy - you know, the way Gregg Araki continues to make these solid little art house movies. It would be silly to fault KABOOM for being shallow or unserious; its whole mode of being is profoundly antiserious, playfully assaulting any form of earnestness other than Smith's emo melancholy. Grady Harp