Movie Review: Could the Wild Surprise Ending of "Kin" Make It the Next "Stranger Things"?

Kin sets up a star-stacked sequel with plenty of promise. If the franchise even gets that far.

In Kin’s final moments, there’s a genuinely surprising (and huge) cameo (as of this writing, still not spoiled on IMDB) and a glimpse at a world beyond the one we’ve just spent two hours within.

"Cool," I thought. "But how does that help me now?"

It’s the latest case of a studio—this time, Lionsgate—putting an entire cinematic universe before the proverbial horse.

Though Kin is more satisfying as a standalone film than non-starters like Warcraft and The Dark Tower, there is the looming threat throughout that its narrative legwork for future instalments will have been for naught. If it’s not a hit, there surely won’t be any follow-ups. And what will we be left with? An intimate tale about estranged brothers reconnecting on a road trip while armed with a space-aged gun? Okay, that’s not so bad, I suppose.

Kin is directed by Aussie twins Jonathan and Josh Baker, expanding on their evocative, special-effects showcase short Bag Man. (Screenwriter Daniel Casey has expanded the story.) It stars Jack Reynor as Jimmy, a crook just of jail who has moved back to his Detroit home, bunking with his adopted 13-year-old brother, Eli (Myles Truitt). If you wanted to hear about more siblings, you're in luck, because James Franco and Gavin Fox are also here, playing the Balik bros, drug dealers who come to shake-down Jimmy and his disappointed dad Hal (Dennis Quaid) upon release.

Jimmy and Eli wind up on the run from the Baliks after a robbery goes way wrong, driving towards Las Vegas, toting a big bag of cash and a futuristic gun Eli found in an abandoned warehouse. (He snagged it from the corpse-strewn aftermath of what looks like a murderous Halo cosplay convention.) Along the way, they pick up Milly (Zoë Kravitz), an exotic dancer so eager to escape her current boss she’ll take her chances on the runaways with a laser cannon. But Franco’s scenery-chewing villain is close behind, as are two robotic, Daft Punk-ish investigators tracking the gun.

Intergalactic weaponry aside, Kin is closer in spirit to the sensitive, southern pictures of Jeff Nichols (especially Midnight Special and Mud) and David Gordon Green than anything adapted from a YA novel. Most of the movie stretches on without much action at all, and though there’s a persistent threat on their tail, Jimmy, Eli and Milly seem to meander rather than sprint. The Bakers take their sweet time too, focusing on little, human (sometimes not all that astutely observed) moments rather than world-shaking revelations, save for the final minutes. Maybe that’s what makes the ending feel so incongruous and unexpected; so fun and also a little annoying.

Few of the performers leave a mark—especially not Franco, whose presence in this post-#MeToo moment sticks a little too unpleasantly—except for maybe Kravitz. Truitt's Eli never feels fully fleshed out, and the darkest implications of this tale (which ultimately center on a kid discovering a gun) go unexplored.

I’m sure producer Shawn Levy—of Stranger Things—was hoping the Bakers would make something closer to his Netflix hit, created by, ahem, the Duffer brothers. (Mogwai’s synth-heavy soundtrack nearly gets there, adding a futuristic tint to the open-chord guitars of other Americana scores.) He'll have to settle for the nifty sequences in the back-half, including a tense stick-up of a poker game and a violent jail break-in.

They point towards a brighter future for both the Bakers and the Kin sequels, should those sequels become a thing.

3/5

In Australian cinemas 30 August. Rated M for science fiction violence and coarse language.

Header Image: StudioCanal