Quartile rating: 6/10 · 1 rating
It’s 2006, YouTube is in its infancy, and internet porn is still behind a paywall. Taking the stage name Brent Corrigan, a fresh-faced, wannabe adult video performer is molded into a star by Stephen, a closeted gay porn mogul who runs the skin flick empire Cobra Video from his seemingly ordinary suburban home.
King Cobra is a serviceable true-crime drama about the murder of gay porn producer Bryan Kocis and the rise of Sean Paul Lockhart (Brent Corrigan). The film benefits from committed performances — James Franco and Christian Slater add some weight — but the narrative feels uneven, struggling to balance its lurid subject matter with genuine dramatic insight. Cinematography is workmanlike without distinction. The story has inherent novelty in its niche subject matter and LGBT true-crime framing, but the execution is fairly conventional. The ending, following the real events, arrives without much emotional payoff or dramatic catharsis, feeling anticlimactic given the buildup.