Kin (2018)

(On Cable TV, October 2022) There’s something both endearing and frustrating in Kin by design, and how you react to it may depend on your attitude toward genre films. It’s both a Science Fiction film and a coming-of-age travelogue, with a fuzzy ending that doesn’t make a lot of sense on its own but sets up later instalments that, as of this writing, look increasingly unlikely. At first, it’s interesting to follow a young black man from a bad Detroit neighbourhood as he discovers a weapon that’s clearly far beyond current technology. Ignoring every single mob movie ever made, he picks up the weapon. MEANWHILE (as in: not related to anything else, but it’s that kind of film), his older brother gets out of jail and into an argument with a small-time crime boss (the once-ubiquitous, now-disappeared James Franco) that escalates, forcing a road trip. The forced exile is a great way for the brothers to bond, visit a strip club, meet a sex-worker-with-a-heart-of-gold who wants to settle down, and remain unaware of the criminal gang members tracking them across the country. (There’s something odd about a 14-year-old protagonist visiting a strip club and waving a terrifying weapon around, but that’s modern America for you.) If you’re thinking, “Wait, what’s this family/crime story doing in what began as a science-fiction film?”, just wait—the alien weapon becomes plot-relevant again when the mobsters finally track them down. That’s when the film regains its action/SF/thriller groove, with the SF element escalating all the way to a temporal intrusion and a somewhat silly revelation. The intruders refuse to elaborate further and retreat just in time for the closing credits, dangling a far more interesting film as potential sequel. One of Kin’s many assets is the number of familiar names in supporting roles—starting with Zoe Kravitz as a stripper, but also including Franco, Dennis Quaid and Michael B. Jordan in a short climactic role. Names, however, aren’t enough to save a production that probably had noble intentions (as in: let’s bring those crazy Science Fiction gadgets in a realistic crime road movie) but ends up tonally jumbled, and more disappointing than anything else when it hints at a much more expansive sequel. Said sequel will most likely never happen, considering that the film was a commercial bomb upon release, and it’s been five years without an update. I can talk about the fun of slingshot ending in Science Fiction all day long, but Kin hasn’t earned the right to one after being in low-budget low-octane mode nearly all the way until the conclusion. If you’re a non-genre fan stumbling upon Kin for its family road move aspect, then you may be pleasantly surprised by the inclusion of SF devices in a modern-day narrative. But let’s face it: Kin was made and marketed to SF genre audiences who are far more likely to be bored by the mundane middle third of the film, and find the SF elements too little too late to make the result any better.