Kindred

INSPIRATION:

District 9 meets Back To The Future

"When I was looking for a strong Universal Theme that would resonate with anyone, my mind turned to personal responsibility: it’s the ethical touchstone of our time. So in Kindred, the Hero’s Journey is about facing your past and fixing your own problems, not expecting others to do it for you. The theme I settled on was: a better future starts with taking personal responsibility. It’s a change anyone can aspire to.”
- Josh Bryer

SYNOPSIS:

Ayinde is a smart, young Australian Aboriginal man, and a skilled hunter, but his fighting spirit has been crushed by years of persecution at the hands of two corrupt local cops. The same bastards that killed his vengeful father and drove his mother away when he was just a boy - and they’ve harassed him ever since.

Ayinde burns for his own revenge, but he saw what taking on the cops in this town gets you: killed. So instead of fighting his own battles, he turns to others for help. And when the shit really hits the fan, he runs. After all, that’s what his mother did - or so he thinks...

The relentless cops in question are a couple of cousins: Krusch, a deluded Sergeant, stuck in a half-horse town, bitter that Ayinde’s mother rejected his affections; and Terra, now a power-hungry Army Brigadier, disgraced in the act of trying to protect his country. Both have a lot to prove; and somehow Ayinde’s always in their way.

Ayinde’s world is turned upside down when he’s abducted by what looks like an alien spacecraft. He tries to escape, crashing the ship in the desert, where he finds himself alone with his captor, Skye. But all is not what it seems.

She’s his future daughter, and she’s made a terrible mistake - so she’s come back in time to save her dad and the world.

She tells him Terra has acquired her rod - a deadly future weapon that she lost on a time-tour to a moment 15 years ago. He's about to unlock its secrets and use them to control all humankind, and Ayinde is best placed to overcome him and save the world from a new Dark Age.

To do this, Ayinde must master the Legacy: a rare genetic mutation he possesses, passed down by family, that enables telepathy and amplifies your potential into a superpower… But as Skye explains, there’s another major problem: Terra has the Legacy too, and once he masters his mind control - and the rod - he leaps to world domination over the corpses of Ayinde and his sister Weema.

Scared and skeptical, but willing to go along for now, Ayinde accepts Skye’s training, keeping one eye open for an easier way out. But first, they must break out of jail. Krusch has captured them both, along with the rest of Ayinde’s inner circle, charging him with a crime he didn’t commit.

After a brazen escape, they race for a granite rock hill where Skye can carve a call for help that will survive the ravages of time. Terra and Krusch are in hot pursuit aboard a military-issue Black Hawk, with a fleet of police cars close behind. Terra, obsessed with forcing Skye to unlock the power of the rod for him; and Krusch, doing his older cousin’s bidding until he can wrap his cold hands around Ayinde’s throat one last time.

After Ayinde and company are nearly killed in a shootout with Terra and Krusch, Skye gives Ayinde a glimpse of the grim future his kindred face. Emboldened by this, and his growing Combat power, he rallies his sister Weema - who’s starting to master her Telekinesis power - and tries to take a stand.

But the twin urges to seek help and run are still too strong for him to fight. It's a path Skye can’t seem to shake him from - and it soon leads to the fugitives being recaptured by Terra and Krusch and locked away, deep in an underground military compound.

To add to their woes, Terra now has two rods in his possession - his and Skye’s, but he still can’t figure out the tech. With his patience wearing thin, he resorts to torture to extract the knowledge he needs.

But Terra’s efforts backfire. Pushed to the brink of death, Ayinde finally masters his Legacy and brings his full fury to bear. Together, he and his kindred break free and take on Terra and Krusch, in a no-holds-barred showdown - fighting not just for their family’s lives, but the future of all humankind.

Before killing Krusch, Ayinde learns the real reason his mother left them: she was heavily pregnant with Krusch’s child, and running was the only way to save them from a life with her rapist as their surrogate father.

With his rage blazing red-hot but under a cool layer of ice, Ayinde squares up to Terra to complete his revenge - just as he’s about to unlock the rod’s secrets and unleash armageddon. In the mayhem, Terra commandeers a spacecraft and is almost free of the Earth’s atmosphere when Ayinde’s brute strength combines with Weema’s TK to destroy both man and machine in the nick of time.

Having saved the world and lived to see it, Ayinde has finally dealt with his past. Now his future becomes clear: he must seek out his mother, and find his younger half-brother - Krusch’s spawn - before the Legacy’s shadow darkens Earth again…

-- END --

FOOTNOTE:
While the action in Kindred is currently set in Australia, there’s no reason it couldn’t take place anywhere with desert regions and an ancient Indigenous population - like North America. We’d just need to do a quick pass to adjust for appropriate geographical and cultural details.