Someday soon, Justin Kelly will become the finest Lifetime Original Movie director. First, he has a penchant for lurid tales about the darkness of humanity. He knows the importance of pace and characterization. He can conduct most actors through tricky roles without making them look like embarrassments. But, as a visual director, his imagery only utilizes the most basic of set-ups, not even striving to get past Film 101. It’s almost like he doesn’t care, nor does he have the budget to strive for something grander.
That’s relatively fine, because when King Cobra works, it plays like the finest in extreme camp. James Franco and Keegan Allen are ludicrously over the top as Joe and Harlow, two coked-up Virginia Beach hustlers who are in debt up to their ears to fund their lavish lifestyle of modern mansions and sports cars. At first Daddy Joe pimps out Harlow as a fetish top, but gets ridiculously jealous if Harlow so much a kiss on the cheek from one of his tricks. Later, they start a porn studio called Viper Boyz but are ridiculously outsold by newcomer Brent Corrigan.
Corrigan (Keegan Allen) was only 17 when he started working for Cobra Video, a small amateur porn studio run out of one guy’s house. Stephen (Christian Slater) lives a closeted lifestyle in a suburban neighborhood where nobody knew he was gay nevertheless filming gay porn. But, Corrigan’s onscreen charisma makes Corrigan a star, and Stephen keeps him at home as his half-boyfriend half-employee to keep making more and more videos, each of which were turning massive profits.
These two stories spin around each other as the studios rise and/or fall, relationships strengthen or fall apart, and greed plays an ever increasing counterpoint to jealousy. Justin Kelly, who also wrote the screenplay, bounces the stories off each other in rapid fashion and maintains a heady pace only matched by the regular stream of half-naked bodies on the screen. Kelly’s fascination, and his strength as a director, comes from creating complex characters and pulling consistently strong performances from the actors.
But, that’s where his strengths stop. Sure, King Cobra is a low budget movie, but it doesn’t have to look like a low budget movie. During a conversation, Kelly places the camera at textbook over-the-shoulder angles to have the most basic conversation. For him, the camera is here to convey the basic building blocks of the story; there’s no style to speak of, and the frame is regarded as a nuisance. His basicness is fine and dandy when you have four decent actors pinging off each other for an hour. But, it becomes a problem when the movie is supposed to turn into a thriller. The thrills are severely lacking, and Kelly doesn’t have the money to pull off the real life finale of burning down the house.
When King Cobra is good, it’s very good, and when it’s bad, it’s interminable. It has a nice, strong pounding opening hour or so, even if it doesn’t have the balls to go full on porn with the gay sex. But, Kelly loses it and doesn’t know how to bring it home for the climax.
King Cobra streams on Netflix
