Brightburn

“Maybe there is something wrong with Brandon. He may look like us. He's not like us!”

Filmology Rating: 2.5 out of 4

Brightburn is the infamous 'Dark Superman' vision from producer, James Gunn. It is directed by David Yarovesky and written by siblings, Brian and Mark Gunn. You know the story, an extraterrestrial ship lands on Earth and two parents, desperate to have a child of their own, discovers the wreckage. They raise him as an adopted son, named Brandon. All is fine until adolescence when he begins to change.

This is 'Chronicle' meets 'Close Encounters of the Third Kind' (sort of) and the writers had a brilliant opportunity to deconstruct the perception of supernatural abilities, most connected to Superman. However, this entire film feels like a lot of missed opportunity.

It is a very slow moving film. That is not bothersome, however, it feels like the runtime is really stretched to barely fit eighty-five minutes.

The story is very paper-thin. It's just "things happen." It's almost a coming of age story. This film is a lot of things and horror is one of them. The horror aspects are thankfully used in moderation. But think of it as a 'Superman Movie' but Superman makes all of the wrong decisions, which is interesting in itself.

There was not enough on paper to engross me. At a point, it becomes a complete slasher film where the child needs to kill people because that's what the voices in his head told him to do. He has no motivation other than that. The kills themselves are very gory. There was obviously lots of thought put into them.

The parents are played by Elizabeth Banks and David Denman who are both excellent. I felt like I was watching real people coping with this situation and they were the best aspect of the film. They were most interesting because it was engaging to see how they reacted to their son being "different." Brandon was fun to watch, but I found more intrigue in how others reacted to him.

This could have been a very intriguing experience, but after the film fell into conventional cliches of the genre, it became less interesting. I wish there was a larger narrative underneath "kid has Superman powers", but there really is not. But this is a fine slasher/horror with lots of fun elements with the theme: don't have children.

Rating: Rent It

-Nolan