What if the Superman origin story had a dark, horror-movie style twist? That’s the conceit of Brightburn, a movie produced by the director of the Guardians of the Galaxy films and the upcoming Suicide Squad film, written by his brothers Mark and Brian, and directed by David Yarovesky, who directed the pretty-good horror film The Hive. And from the trailers, it looked like it could be really good, or just plain bad. Either way, I put my butt in the seat and waited to see how it would go.
Brightburn follows the Breyers family, consisting of farmer Kyle, wife and artist Tori, and adopted son Brandon. Around his twelfth birthday, Brandon starts exhibiting supernatural powers and psychopathic behaviors. When he starts to hurt classmates and people around town start dying or going missing, Tori and Kyle reveal to their son his extraterrestrial origins, and he reveals to them his dark purpose in coming to Earth.
*sigh* You know, I can forgive them for copying Superman’s basic power-set in this film. I can also forgive them for not mentioning him at all (probably did that out of legal reasons). But I can’t forgive them for making a bad film that puts all its best bits in the trailers!
I kid you not, everything that was supposed to make this film exciting and scary was revealed in the trailer. The woman who got glass in her eye, the guy in the car seeing Brandon flying on the road, the girl’s hand getting broken, the plane crash. Those should’ve been surprises, but we all saw them in the trailers, and that takes out all of the suspense and horror of the actual movie. Except for a few moments, I watched the film thinking to myself, “That’s predictable. That’s predictable. Oh, how could I have not seen that coming? Oh wait, I did! In the previews!”
What do you have left when you take all those elements out? Just your below-average evil child horror film, like Prodigy from earlier this year (which I didn’t review because it was so much like every other evil child film out there). Parents get a kid, usually not their own. Kid grows up mostly fine, but then starts exhibiting scary behavior. Kid turns out to be evil, either because they were born seriously messed up or because of some supernatural reason, one parent ends up dead, the other either successfully kills the kid or is killed while trying because a bystander was nearby and didn’t know the truth.
Seen it. Done it. Took it to dinner. Had a good time afterwards. Ordered them an Uber. Point is, done to death.
There were only two things I liked about Brightburn. One was the mask the kid Brandon wore, which looks like a crocheted cross between an insect head and Cthulhu’s face. The other is Elizabeth Banks as mother Tori. You really see her love for this strange boy, and how much she tries to hold onto that little boy despite all he’s done.
But other than that, Brightburn is sadly unoriginal despite marketing itself as original. And I’m convinced the filmmakers knew that, and that’s why they put all the highlights in the trailers, to get butts in seats. On a scale of 1 to 5, I’m giving this one a 1.5. Avoid, unless you like wasting two hours of your time. I hope to God I never write anything as unoriginal as this.
Speaking of which, I’m still looking for advanced readers for my upcoming fantasy-horror novel from Castrum Press, Rose. The story follows a young woman who turns into a plant creature (and that’s just the start of her problems). Anyone who’s interested should send me an email at ramiungar@ramiungarthewriter.com before June 7th. All I ask is that you read the book and then consider posting a review after release. Thanks, and I look forward to hearing from you.
Until next time, my Followers of Fear, pleasant nightmares!
Rami Ungar The Writer 
From your review, I gathered that you watched the trailer much more attentively than I did. Honestly, if I had watched the movie (and I doubt I will), I probably wouldn’t have remembered them using the footing already. Either way, that always sucks and it’s too bad when you get disappointed that way.
Not that it’s a horror movie, it’s more of a thriller-esque thing, but Serenity (the 2019 film) does the complete opposite. The trailer is so misleading, the movie turns out to be a whole other genre!
I may have to check that one out. And BTW, you were right: Aladdin is delightful for the most part. I mean, there are things that could have been better, and I will discuss those on Facebook, but I’m glad I made it my pallete cleanser.
Yeah, I don’t think Aladdin is the best of the best, but it is fun to watch. As long as people go in with an open mind and moderate expectations, I think it will be fine. Will Smith carried that movie a lot though.
Too bad Aladdin couldn’t sing and Nasim Pedrad was wasted in that film, though.
Hmm, I thought Mena could sing.
He sounded off-key to me.
Huh, as I said, sounded fine to me.
*shrug* Whatever. It was still better than a lot of films I could name.
This was on my to watch list but I think now that I’ll skip it and opt for Godzilla instead!
Good choice. If we see it around the same time, we can discuss it afterwards.