Tori and Kyle have long dreamt of being parents. But, try as they might, they’ve never been able to conceive. Then one night, a ship crash-lands in the woods behind their farm, and they discover a baby inside. Believing this to be a gift from above, the couple adopts the child and name him Brandon. All seems well, until Brandon hits puberty, and starts to exhibit superhuman abilities, including flight, strength, invulnerability, and heat vision. More disturbing than that, though, Brandon starts behaving violently, killing their chickens, breaking a classmates hand, and, eventually, just hurting anyone who displeases him. Tori and Kyle do their best to rein him in, but it might be too late, as Brandon now views himself as a predator and the whole world as his prey.
Brightburn is a competently-crafted horror film, with good performances, a quick pace, some excellent effects for such a low budget, and an unusual central premise. I imagine that most people who go into this movie will be entertained, as I was. It’s 90 minutes long, got some good scares and gore, and if you like the idea of seeing Superman turn evil, you’ll probably enjoy yourself.
That said, I can’t unequivocally recommend this movie. Not because I thought it was boring, mind you. This is an entertaining movie. It’s just, I’m a huge fan of the Big Blue Boy Scout, and If you read my essay “Brightburn, And The Troubling Trend Of Evil Superman Stories,” you know that I think there’s a disturbing undercurrent of xenophobia and cynicism to narratives that imagine him turning bad. This film definitely contains some of those elements. Like anti-immigrant propaganda that shows people who came from afar as being inherently devious and malicious, Brightburn never really gives Brandon a concrete reason for why he becomes evil. One night, his ship activates, and then, within the blink of an eye, he’s killing people. There’s no build up. There’s no downfall. You never see him feeling remorse or acting conflicted. And it’s not like the movie Chronicle, where you understand why the main character turns bad, since he’s got an abusive father, a dying mother, and he’s regularly bullied at school. Brandon, by all accounts, has a happy, functional home life, with no real reason to hurt anyone. (Well, apart from him being an alien, and all aliens being evil, of course).
But, honestly, the troubling messages aren’t my main concern with the flick, if for no other reason than that I don’t think the filmmakers were smart enough to consider them. My main issue with the movie is the fact that it’s poorly written, and riddled with cliches. It’s 90 minutes long and moves incredibly fast. Which is good in the sense that you never feel bored, but bad in the sense that you never get any concrete idea for who these characters are. I mentioned Brandon’s lack of motivation, but he’s not the only one who has basically nothing to him. His mother, Tori, played by Elizabeth Banks, has essentially one defining trait; denial. She doesn’t want to accept that her son could be evil. We don’t know anything else about her, like her past, or her life outside of Brandon. And that’s the case with more or less everyone else in the movie as well. As a result, when they die, you don’t really care. And when I said this movie was cliche-ridden, I meant it. Every hackneyed trope that you could associate with the slasher genre–jump scares, characters hiding under the bed when they should be running away, monsters appearing in the mirror behind people–shows up in this film. The only thing that makes this movie different is that, instead of Jason or Freddy, the killer stalking people is Superman.
Now, I want to be clear and say that I don’t hate this movie. Purely on an entertainment level, I enjoyed myself. And if you’re a horror fan, or like the idea of seeing a darker take on a superhero movie, you’ll probably like it too. But if you’re expecting something deep, or subversive, or expecting good characterization, you won’t find that here. Make of this what you will.
liusviews 