'Kin' A Review

Kin is a scifi action movie about a teen boy Eli(Myles Truitt) who finds a futuristic weapon in an abandoned building. His brother Jimmy(Jack Reynor) gets out of prison and gets Eli and his father Hal(Dennis Quaid) involved with skeezy criminal Taylor(James Franco). They flee across country perused by the police, Taylor and his gang, as well as nameless future soldiers.

The cast is stacked with competent actors, Quaid especially gives the movie more gravitas and commitment then the page warrants. Truitt is open and engaging as the lead, Reynor is effective enough but all the characters are thinly drawn and inhabit a convoluted almost listless narrative. It is not a coming of age story, a scifi story, or a crime thriller. It attempts all of those but fails at all of them. It's so ambitious in tone and genre it has no focus. Franco gives a flat performance, channeling a watered down, boring version of his best performance Alien from Spring Breakers. Carrie Coon is wasted in what amounts to little more than a cameo as an FBI agent appearing literally seconds before the movie ends.

The visuals have style and Detroit as the initial setting is interesting(and rare) but the script has a fundamental identity crisis which prevents it from getting close to it's potential.

Excellently cast, poorly executed.

Stream It.