PLOT: Four hard-partying Aussie youths find themselves in for a nightmarish night after an evening of partying goes disastrously awry.
REVIEW: I think there’s a lesson to be learned from these siege movies. If Russian gangsters offer to put you up for the night, the smart choice might be to say no. A whole slew of movies have been made with Russian gangsters as particularly brutal baddies, with the recent Pretty Lethal actually having a similar plot: it was about a bunch of young people forced to fight for their lives against Russian gangsters—only in that case, they were ballerinas.
There’s nothing quite as unique about Kick On, which got a world premiere as part of TIFF’s Midnight Madness section. Australian horror has been on a major roll with The Babadook, Talk to Me, the recent Leviticus, and many more. Yet, Kick On, which takes a more action-driven approach to the genre trappings, doesn’t really give you anything you haven’t seen before. Director Nick Kozakis’ film certainly has its moments of inspired carnage, but it’s strictly by the numbers, and I didn’t find myself invested in any of the characters.
It focuses on a quartet of young Australians who get thrown out of a club for fighting but, rather than go home, decide to “kick on,” with them dropping in on a sociopathic Russian named Ray (Nikolas Nikolaeff), who lives in a Melbourne high-rise that’s abandoned save for him and his thugs. At first, he’s actually happy to have some company and, along with his cronies, supplies them with all the booze and coke they want. But when he proves to be too intense, they say their goodbyes, only for one of them, Eden (Markella Kavenagh from The Rings of Power), to foolishly try to pinch some cash so she can pay some medical bills for her sickly sister. Oops—she gets caught, and all hell breaks loose. Soon, body parts are being blown off, people are being killed or maimed, and Eden and her pals (Ras-Samuel, Julian Weeks, and Kaitlyn Boyé) seem unlikely to survive the night.
Siege movies are often cool, but you have to invest in the heroes. Eden gets some character development, but none of her friends are given any personality, and they seem to exist only to meet grisly fates. Eden, as the only real character, never really seems like she could actually die. The most focus besides Eden actually goes to Ray, whom they try to make somewhat three-dimensional, with him mocked by his even more vicious and powerful father as a soft disappointment, and his eventual arrival as the thing the film counts down to. But, after watching him torture Eden and his friends for ninety minutes, it’s hard to have much sympathy for him.
It feels like more of an exercise in style and carnage than anything else, and for sure, the visuals are sleek, with Ray’s towering drug den a good place to stage the action. The soundtrack by Johnny Klimek and Gabriel Isaac Mounsey is propulsive, and there’s a lot of action and gore, but tension—at least to me—was non-existent. It pales in comparison to the similar Green Room by Jeremy Saulnier, which has the substance this one lacks. While I have no doubt it rocked the Midnight Madness crowd, I’ve seen better genre films here. It’s not bad, but there’s nothing about it to really knock you out either.
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