Directed by Gregg Araki

Starring Thomas Dekker, Haley Bennett, Juno Temple

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Gregg Araki was an early exemplar of ‘New Queer Cinema’, with his low-budget features – including The Living End and Nowhere – fuelled by punk urgency, hormonal exuberance and AIDS-generation rage.

Following a mainstream backflip with stoner comedy Smiley Face, Kaboom resembles his earlier work, with slightly less anger.

Abductions, witchcraft, the Apocalypse – plus a cameo from Explosions In The Sky – are all fodder for this shaggy dog tale about gay student Smith (Thomas Dekker) and his strange days on campus.

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Stealing the show are the wild Juno Temple as an omnivorous siren and Haley Bennett as Smith’s brittle, wisecracking lesbian buddy Stella.

Vibrantly coloured, unspooling like a free-associative comic strip, Kaboom is enjoyable, throwaway and a touch ’90s in its self-congratulatory coolness. Yet it still feels strikingly defiant in its no-holds-barred polysexual insouciance.

Jonathan Romney