The Thousands

There’s something rather ’90s about Gregg Araki’s conspiracy-sodden college sex comedy. With a cheap, candy-coloured video aesthetic, self-consciously quippy dialogue, preposterous plot twists and detours into the surreal and supernatural, it’s almost like a lost cult TV series. Imagine Twin Peaks meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

At first I was vaguely embarrassed, thinking how 19-year-old me would’ve found Kaboom‘s nonchalantly omnivorous sex scenes really ‘edgy’. Hell, nowadays-me can admit they’re kinda hot. Cinema studies freshman Smith (Thomas Dekker) lusts after his knucklehead surfie roommate Thor (Chris Zylka), shags perky London (Juno Temple) and shyly flirts with Oliver (Brennan Meija), while his sarcastic lesbian BFF Stella (Haley Bennett) beds a psycho witch named Lorelei (Roxane Mesquida). But what’s with Smith’s recurring dreams, that nice engraved card addressing him as “the chosen son”, and those dudes wearing animal masks?

As Stella wisely observes, it’s “as nutty as squirrel shit”, and it only gets nuttier. I first let myself LOL at the line “I got your email address from the Explosions In The Sky Facebook page” and pretty much couldn’t stop. I was in utter hysterics by the brilliant ending, which won’t disappoint fans of Araki’s “teenage apocalypse” films.