Kin is a new theatrical release that bills itself as a sci-fi film about a kid who finds a ray gun. This has been done before with a very apt title: Laserblast. It’s a terrible 70s movie but it is accurately titled. Kin, as a title, suggests nothing about ray guns, blasters, zapper, lasers, or anything remotely sci-fi. Yet the trailers suggest it IS about the ray gun and the alien soldiers who want it back. But SURPRISE – the title is accurate because the trailers are selling the movie wrong. It’s kind of confusing. Let me explain.
Kin is about a young teenager who finds a mysterious laser rifle / ray gun in an abandoned building (along with the dead soldiers who had been using it). He takes the weapon home where we meet his dad (Dennis Quaid!) and his just-released-from-prison older brother. The older brother is in debt to some criminals so he takes them to his dad’s office to rob the safe. Things go wrong and the two brothers end up on the lamb with a bagful of money and some angry criminals chasing. Oh, and some helmeted space men on motorcycles who want their ray gun back.
Notice how incidental the ray gun is to the story? Because this is a movie about two brothers getting to know each other while on a road trip to Tahoe. It’s not about the ray gun or the aliens… they are barely in the movie. This is a movie that clearly had the sci-fi elements tacked on for reasons of fooling people into going to see it. Because we all want to see a movie about a child with a laser rifle. Pew pew?
But that just means that we’re getting a drama about family (hence the title of the movie) so that has to be good. Right? Well… not really. This is a drab, gloomy film about a guy who should never be responsible for a child on the run from psychopathic villains who are kind of in the wrong movie. The criminals are OP psychos… and they are lead by James Franco for some weird reason. What? You didn’t know James Franco was in this film and it took me four paragraphs to mention it? Well, I don’t think he was in the marketing so I guess that just works out.
Oh, and Zoey Kravitz shows up in the movie too. That’s a fifth paragraph addition because that’s how much the movie cares she’s in it too. She plays a stripper-with-a-heart-of-gold the brothers meet (yes, the older brother takes his fourteen year old brother to a strip club). She joins them for… reasons… and then vanishes during the final act of the film. I guess we needed some female representation… so… yeah… that about checks that box, right? What? She needs backstory or a reason to be in the film? Naaah. Hell, she’s not even the romantic interest… which maybe is for the best (since the older brother is pretty terrible, really).
Anyhow, this film is a miss. It doesn’t work on any level, even as the family drama it so clearly started as before having the genre elements – including the ray gun – bolted on. The drama is pretty dull, the ray gun stuff pointless, the pursuing aliens kind of look cheap, and none of it amounts to much, even with a surprise twist ending that leaves more questions that it answers. Because, sure, we’re getting a sequel to this one, right? RIGHT?!?!
Score: 58