Film Review: Foresight: Killer Instinct (2012)

SYNOPSIS:

When corrupt detectives attack the home of Glenn parsons, a local psychic, leaving his wife dead and him grievously wounded; a medieval xenophobic rage boils to the surface in a maelstrom of blood soaked vengeance.

REVIEW:

When you review films like I do, packets of films’ come in the mail, you never know what you’re going to get. You spend time sifting through the dirt trying to find a gem. The junk outweighs the jewels but it’s always interesting trying to find something that tickles your fancy. I love discovering an indy film you know people will be talking about for years to come. “Foresight: Killer Instinct” is the debut feature by director Duncan Cunningham. This was not one of those films. “Foresight” just never worked for me in any way. Even though the story was quite good, the execution is a failure and somewhat laughable.

Glen (Martin Cunningham) is a psychic who occasionally helps his police officer brother Matthew (Duncan Cunningham) on cases. He asks Glen to try and get a reading off a body at a crime scene. He wasn’t even ready for what he was about to discover. Detective Steel (Michael Edward Williams) is a corrupt cop. When Glen gets the read he realizes that Steel was behind the murder. In fear of being discovered, Steel and his lapdog kill Glen’s wife and leave him for dead. Fueled by the rage boiling inside him, Glen dishes out the payback until he and Steel finally meet face to face.

“Foresight” manages to do a couple of things right. The story is solid and engaging. I was interested in what would happen next and where it was going. With the lack of experience and budget, the filmmakers made the mistake of taking the film far too serious. It just wasn’t fun to watch. There are a couple of nice gore effects (a particularly nice head shot is present) and the music is incredibly effective. It gets you pumped for the events to come, only to be disappointed when the events look like drunken friends messing with each other.

When choreographing a fight scene, it might be a good idea to have the parties involved do something more than role around in the dirt with one another. When someone was getting stabbed, there were some nice close-ups of the blade going in, but the rest is just ridiculous. Much of the dialogue was laughable as well. The amount of f-bombs were so enormous, that it was distracting. I have no problem with cursing, except when there is such an abundance of it that the sentences that are coming out of their mouths make little to no sense. It even gets to the point where the responses end up being single curse words, grunts, or maniacal laughter. If you took all that away there wouldn’t be much left.

I usually don’t expect much when it comes to acting in films like these, in this case it was worse than I expected. The performances range from wooden to being way too ridiculous and over the top. It wouldn’t even be fair of me to point out one person since I didn’t enjoy any of them. At least they tried though which is more than I can say for many. “Foresight” is almost worth watching for being so bad it’s good but not quite there.

I mentioned that some of the gore gags worked well and that the music actually kicks ass so maybe it wasn’t all that bad. This was the Cunningham Clan Entertainment’s first feature and I would not consider it a success. I hope it does well for them and that they can learn from the mistakes on this only to improve on the next. Learning is a key ingredient to becoming a success at anything and if you can’t admit to and correct your mistakes, you might as well throw in the towel. They have the story right but the execution needs some serious work. I wish I could recommend the film but “Foresight: Killer Instinct” was a huge failure in my book. Better luck next time. *1/2 (out of 5)

Foresight: Killer Instinct (2012)