There's something deeply exhausting about watching young people make catastrophically bad decisions in abandoned buildings, as if the architecture itself is conspiring against poor life choices. Kick On arrives during TIFF's Midnight Madness section promising bloody entertainment, but what it actually delivers is a reminder of how stale the "party gone wrong" siege template has become. I've sat through enough of these films to recognize the pattern immediately, and this one doesn't even try to subvert it.
The Australian Horror Paradox
What makes this particularly fascinating is how Kick On sits within Australia's current horror renaissance. We've got The Babadook exploring grief, Talk to Me dissecting teenage ennui, and Leviticus offering something genuinely unsettling. These films understand that horror works best when the monster is metaphorical. Yet here we have Nick Kozakis opting for pure visceral assault, as if Australian cinema needs to prove it can match Hollywood's body count rather than its psychological depth. Personally, I think this reveals a troubling pressure on local filmmakers to prioritize spectacle over substance, chasing festival buzz with gore rather than genuine innovation.
Characters as Collateral Damage
The character dynamics here expose a fundamental laziness in modern siege filmmaking. Eden, played by Markella Kavenagh, receives the only meaningful arc, while her companions exist merely as meat for the grinder. What many people don't realize is how this reflects a broader industry trend where ensemble casts are really just solo vehicles with backup dancers. If you take a step back and think about it, the film asks us to care about Eden's sick sister while treating everyone else as disposable plot devices. This isn't just bad writing; it's a philosophical statement about whose lives matter in genre cinema, and I find that quietly disturbing.
The Russian Gangster Cliché
One thing that immediately stands out is the Russian gangster element, which feels lifted from a 1990s action movie rather than 2024 reality. Ray, portrayed by Nikolas Nikolaeff, is supposedly complex because his father mocked him, but after ninety minutes of torture, that backstory feels like an afterthought. In my opinion, the film mistakes cruelty for depth, believing that giving a villain daddy issues makes him three-dimensional when it really just provides context for sadism. What this really suggests is our cultural obsession with Eastern European criminals as universal villains, a lazy shorthand that says more about Western anxieties than about any actual threat.
- The "Eastern European villain" as lazy shorthand
- Daddy issues as excuse for sadism
- Western anxiety projection
Style Without Stakes
The comparison to Jeremy Saulnier's Green Room is inevitable, and frankly, Kick On loses that argument badly. Where Saulnier builds tension through character investment and spatial intelligence, Kozakis relies on propulsive soundtrack cues and sleek visuals that feel hollow without emotional stakes. From my perspective, this is the difference between horror that respects its audience and horror that assumes we're just there for the carnage. A detail that I find especially interesting is how the film's high-rise setting could have been claustrophobic and terrifying, but instead feels like a video game level waiting to be cleared.
Trauma as Plot Device
The medical bills motivation for Eden's theft feels particularly cynical. While I understand the need for a catalyst, using a sister's illness as mere plot fuel reduces real trauma to a narrative convenience. If you take a step back and think about it, this choice reveals how comfortable Hollywood and its imitators have become with exploiting suffering for shock value. Personally, I think the film could have explored healthcare anxiety in Australia, but instead it uses illness as a cheap justification for violence.
Conclusion
What this really suggests is that Kick On isn't interested in saying anything meaningful about youth, violence, or Australian identity. It's content to be loud, bloody, and forgettable. While I have no doubt the Midnight Madness crowd enjoyed the sensory overload, I've seen better genre films here. It's not bad, but there's nothing about it to really knock you out either, and in an era of Talk to Me and The Babadook, that's a tragedy.
