Kick On

Torn between taking care of her sickly sister and tying one on with her mates, Eden (Markella Kavenagh) succumbs to peer pressure and embarks on an all-night rager. Looking to prolong their revelry with some recreational stimulants, they soon find themselves dropping in on Ray (Nikolai Nikolaeff), a notorious mobster’s volatile son, who runs a drug den atop a dilapidated high-rise in a malignant Melbourne neighbourhood. But what was supposed to be a simple score quickly plummets into paranoid pandemonium as a rash decision triggers a spot of homicide with far too many witnesses. Now, Eden and her friends must fight to survive the night in what transforms into a bloody ripper of a siege thriller.

Gorehounds can expect to be well fed as Phillip Klimek’s no-frills script constructs a mean machine of ultraviolence that director Nick Kozakis fulfills with aplomb. Visceral body-horror gags, from head to toe, recall the brutal cruelty of Jeremy Saulnier’s Green Room, and the tension is gleefully stretched as shotguns fire, glass shatters, bones break, and serrated cans are shoved into eyelids with a manic abandon.

It’s as if that drug-fueled nightmare of a scene with Alfred Molina from Boogie Nights was a movie unto itself, only soaked in kerosene and thrown on the barbie. And every time you think you’ve had your fill, Kick On cheekily retorts “ah c’mon, you just got here” and serves you an even gnarlier plate of seconds before smashing it over your skull.

PETER KUPLOWSKY

Content advisory: strobing, extreme violence, accident trauma, coarse language, drug use, sexual content