In my younger days, I used to fritter away time by thumbing through the Leonard Maltin Movie Guide and picking two movies at random and trying to combine the plots. Brightburn sounds like one of those hodgepodges I used to dream up. It is essentially Superman Meets The Omen.
It’s an interesting idea. What if Superman came to Earth not to stand for truth, justice, and the American way, but to cause death and destruction? However, the makers of Brightburn never push past the surface Damien-in-Smallville idea.
Tori (Elizabeth Banks) and Kyle (David Denman) are a couple of farmers who live in Kansas who are struggling to conceive. They think their prayers are answered when a child literally falls from the sky in an alien spacecraft. For a while, the kid (Jackson A. Dunn) seems normal, except for the fact he’s super-strong, can’t be wounded, and has the ability to fly. Once he hits twelve, the ship in the backyard starts calling to him and he discovers his place in the universe: The make the world burn.
So, the set-up is great. Director David Yarovesky captures the off-brand Superman scenes just right. It’s when the movie switches gears and becomes a full-blown horror show that it all falls apart.
Much of the problem has to do with Banks’ character. It’s not a knock against her performance as she does everything the role requires her to do, and then some. It’s that the script (written by Brian and Mark Gunn, brother and cousin of the producer, James Gunn) treats her as a mere plot device. The switch from protective mother to scared, cowering generic horror movie character is almost laughable. It’s like when the movie switches gears, it skips a few gears along the way.
If you can’t find ‘em, grind ‘em, I guess.
The script never quite works. It almost feels Frankensteined together, which is a shame because it’s a neat idea. (Not content to rip-off Superman and The Omen, the screenwriters also directly crib moments from American Psycho and Carrie, if you can fucking believe it.) Even the scenes of the kid using his powers to kill the various adults who get in his way just seem sort of perfunctory.
I did think it kind of funny that the filmmakers were ripping off not one but TWO Richard Donner films. Maybe in the sequel, the kid can team up with other superpowered kids and go on an adventure like The Goonies while being tailed by a pair of mismatched cops, one of whom is a Lethal Weapon. It’s just so stupid it might happen.
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