Instinct to Kill (2001)

An abused woman seeks safety and training in self defense from a personal trainer (Mark Dacascos) after her murderously psychotic husband escapes from a mental health institution and begins hunting her down.

Marc Dacascos and Kadeem Hardison re-team after their excellent 1997 martial arts comedy Drive, but the theme is very different this time around. Instinct to Kill is a pure thriller with some disturbing and meaty psychological tension and a touch of martial arts action primarily from Dacascos who goes up against a nasty serial killer as played by Tim Abell (Special Forces).

The film wouldn’t be truly suspenseful without a victim and Tess (Missy Crider) is the unlucky chosen one. She ends up married to an initially charming serial killer who has stalked her for years. She helplessly endures abuse as a result of his demented mind and only escapes after he’s caught by his own police partner (Kadeem Hardison). But it doesn’t take long for the resourceful Jim to escape and begin hunting down his wife in order to kill her. Jim makes use of his police training to disguise himself, plant explosives, and thwart every attempt by the police to capture him or provide protection for Tess. In response, Tess hires a personal trainer named J.T. (Mark Dacascos) to teach her self defense and help her to fight back. As the pair train in basic firearms and hand-to-hand combat, the killer turns his attention to Tess’s friends and family as he works his way closer to his target. J.T. steps up with his martial arts skills to fight Jim, but Tess is ultimately forced to discover whether or not she has the “instinct to kill.”

As a thriller, Instinct to Kill does well on a small budget. Tim Abell is downright creepy as the serial killer in the same way that Kathy Bates was in Misery. He plays with his victims, just as the filmmakers play with the viewer. You get this desperate sense that as long as the victim stays on Tim’s good side, they will somehow escape his wrath. Where the suspense loses ground is when the film gives over to straight up action. Tim is physically menacing, but Dacascos is appropriately equal to the challenge of taking him on in a fist or gun fight. He does so on several occasions, but you’re never quite sure whether or not the killer will get the upper hand, thus leaving poor Missy to defend herself.

Missy Crider has the toughest role of being the abused victim. Her character provides the film with a higher level of psychological tension as she comes to grips with being passive in the face of aggression. This is really what the story is about. Can a person naturally permissive find the strength to oppose an aggressive, master manipulator? This touches on real world struggles and the film scores points for making it work to some degree, although on an exaggerated level.

Some aspects of the film do not work so well. The killer’s many disguises are unconvincing. His confrontational run ins with police are cheaply done and makes him look more like a guerilla fighter than a psychotic killer on the run. Kadeem Hardison’s character is an idiot who would never be running a police task force with such poor judgment that he displays, particularly near the end. Perhaps most frustrating is a widespread lack of genuine human responses to various situations that waters down the tension. The final blow comes in the form of mediocre combat. Dacascos is extremely gifted as a martial arts actor, but his skills are wasted in this film. His fight in a bar and the several duels with Tim seem contrived as simply an excuse to give Mark something to do besides train Missy.

Instinct to Kill has enough going for it as a thriller to be worth a viewing. It’s certainly no worse than those seemingly endless string Ashley Judd thrillers. But the film fails to generate adequate thrills in the action department for martial arts fans to take consideration. I wish I could at least say Mark relies more on his acting, but its not true. He’s in the film to fight at key moments and have a little romance with Missy, but he isn’t given a chance to shine.