Kaboom Reviews
The Skinny
Its permanent entry into the cult canon may be scuppered by its cheap cinematography, and a general lack of charm.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Top CriticThe film is so disjointed and chaotic that the usual pleasures of Araki's films-which arise from the freedom that his lost boys enjoy-never take hold.
DCist
A vaguely Lynchian thriller with snarky comedic twists that works well -- right up until Araki lets all the air out with a lazily expository final sequence.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5.6/10
Ultra Culture
Unfortunately, as is so often the case, it all went downhill in the last half hour.
This isn't satire, it isn't that funny and the only bits that work are the titillating ones.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
The fact that the characters spout snappy, profane dialogue while all this is, or isn't, going on around them is more "fun" than fun; Araki's like the too-drunk guy who won't go home when the party's over.
Full Review
| Original Score: D+
The movie has been cast, designed, clothed, scored and edited to the bleeding edge of hip, but it hasn't exactly been written.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/4
Designed to have its own fun, filled to the brim with bangs of all kinds but mostly landing with a whimper.
SFX Magazine
there's no method to Kaboom's utter-insanity; it crumbles badly in the final minutes and reveals its central mystery as little more than a meaningless whimsy.
Full Review
| Original Score: 3/5
All that's truly strange here though is that Araki gets so few jolts or laughs from this hodge-podge of genres.
Critic's Notebook
The movie's hot, bathed in an erotic glow, but horribly empty.
Full Review
| Original Score: 1.5/4
Sexy, dark, occasionally funny, good performances--but it's just too stupid to recommend.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2.5/5
Lessons of Darkness
Isn't anarchic and invigorated but sloppy and limp.
Full Review
| Original Score: C-
Washington City Paper
Copulation practically overcomes the alleged premise.
KPBS.org
Gregg Araki likes to call his new film Kaboom, "a bisexual 'Twin Peaks' in college." But it's more like a hipster take on Scooby Doo with a lot of indiscriminate sex thrown in.
Full Review
| Original Score: 5/10
ColeSmithey.com
New Queer Cinema progenitor Gregg Araki backslides into remedial artsy filmmaking with a poorly conceived story about the end of the world.
Full Review
| Original Score: C-
Financial Times
[Araki] made The Living End, Mysterious Skin and other anthems to gay America. Kaboom is less an anthem, more a discordant impromptu.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Daily Telegraph
Watching films whose characters spend much of their time staring at computer screens or waking up from dreams is a bit of a drag.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Independent
A very peculiar campus comedy in which the students seem to have abandoned any pretence of intellectual endeavour for a non-stop merry-go-round of bed-hopping.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/5
Film-Forward.com
It's in the sack where the film cuts loose, where the characters loose their aloof attitudes and the only honest moments in the otherwise glib gabfest occur.
Full Review
| Original Score: 2/4
