Checked out the new supehero/horror film Brightburn. This is the one that posits Superman… only evil. Or Superboy. The basic origin story of Superman… baby arrives in a spaceship and a Kansas farm couple who can’t have a kid of their own adopts him. Kids is brought up in American midwest pastoral splendor and discovers slowly he has super powers.
It’s a high concept idea… but that’s about it. It’s like they came up with the idea (or borrowed it from an elseworlds comic) and then did nothing with it. This is basically just a “killer kid” horror movie… only with superpowers. The kid playing the Clark Kent analog is just a little prick who does jerk things with his newfound powers… and then does horrible, violent, and gory things once he goes full killer kid.
I’ve seen better killer kid flicks and it’s unfortunate that that was the extent of the film maker’s ambition. I was hoping for some twists or some characterization about what it means to be Superman or have powers or whatever. But the film doesn’t really have any interest in creating a kid who might have to fuss with ethics or wonder if he’s good or bad. Spoiler alert: He’s bad.
The film is very violent and gory. Not only do you get what “shooting someone with heat vision” might REALLY look like… you also get “pulling a shard of glass out of an eyeball in closeup”… so not for the kiddies! That’s either good or bad… but at least they had the courage of their convictions. They wanted to make an R rated horror superhero flick and they did. Yay?
I wish I could write even more paragraphs about the cool ideas and in-depth explorations of concepts and themes, but there’s just not much more to say. It’s not a bad killer kid but its hardly one of the better ones and is ultimately just disappointing. It suffers from its own low-ambition and kind of comes off as “meh”… and then has an end-credit montage of what happens next which is far more interesting than the flick just watched.
Score: 74