Firestarter

I don't think I've ever seen the Drew Barrymore version of this Stephen King story, nor have I read the book, so I honestly can't tell you if this lived up to either of those. What I can say is that, despite some interesting flourishes, mostly this is a pedestrian adventure and I'm not sure who the target audience is.

Charlie McGee (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) is a young girl with a supernatural power, when upset, she can generate an intense and destructive fire that she is impervious too. An incident at her school exposes her to a government agency that would like to bring her in for experimentation, one that has a dark history of dealing with people with powers. As her mother Vicky (Sydney Lemmon) and father Andy (Zac Efron) try to get her to safety, another powered individual Rainbird (Michael Greyeyes) is on their trail.

Blumhouse Studios has quite the history of successfully soft rebooting horror films now and their success with "The Invisible Man" is plastered all over the advertising for this one, unfortunately it's not telling anything like as interesting or relevant of a story. Dangerous power in the (relatively) unstable hands of a child is a familiar plot but here it's crowbarred into a low rent revenge action film, if anything - desperately lacking in scares, or invention, to make the experience worthwhile.

I did like the 80's aesthetic. Though it didn't extend to the actual setting, the typeface and style of the credit sequences are retro inspired and interesting, and there's a John (and Cody) Carpenter provided score, which is full of the sort of synthetic sounds that he's know for. I also can't actively criticise the performances of anyone involved, though by the same token, nobody particularly stands out. The visual effects are fine, if a bit toned down for what they might have been.

It's just all in service of a story that's not very interesting. I know it's not a horror story in the way some other King narratives are, but it's desperately lacking in any sort of thrills.

Lately when I watch a new movie, I ask myself "how would this movie be without it's special effects?". Too many movies get by on shiney and sparkley colors on the screen for a large part of the movie.

If you do that here, you don't even have an average movie.

What happened to Hollywood in terms of smart writing? I'd throw acting in there too, but I think it's unfair to judge actors when they have the scripts and writing they're dealing with now. I'm not even sure how they can say many of the lines with a straight face, so that's impressive I guess.

If you literally have nothing else to do, this would be ok to have on in the background.

Firestarter 2022 is not a total fail but nothing remarkable or at least entertaining - forced at gunpoint to decide, I would prefer to watch again the version from 1984 starring Drew Barrymore. No, I am not a great fan of that one either but it is the more entertaining one of both movies. The new version just rolls on and I watched the whole affair rather indifferently. The technical aspects (acting, cam, production) are okay, but if you know the old version I do not know why one should watch the new one. On the horror-o-meter this one is also a very low one. Final word: redundant.

Firestarter is a film that feels cheap, looks ugly and manages to be rushed yet still feel boring and needlessly slow. It doesn't really succeed at any genre either, with only a few cheap jump scares as a horror and it definitely fails as a superhero movie.

Ryan Kiera Armstrong does her best with weak material and almost makes it work. It's nice to see Zac Efron in a more dramatic role once again but he's also let down by such bland and lifeless stuff. However, Kurtwood Smith's brief appearance is great and threatens to give the film some actual energy.

Thankfully it is mercifully short and the music by John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter and Daniel Davis is fantastic, easily the best part of the film. It's infinitely better than anything actually happening and tricks you into thinking something actually interesting might happen.

Many adaptations of Stephen King novels exist--on film or television--that aren't very good. It is quite frankly just really, really difficult to translate masterful textual stories onto the big screen. But even amidst that mediocrity, Firestarter might be the worst effort I've ever beheld.

For a very basic overview, Firestarter tells the story of young Charlie McGee (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), a girl imbued with pyro-kinetic mental abilities--in other words, the ability to create/control fire. Hidden away from society by a father (Zac Efron) & mother (Sydney Lemmon) who perpetuated her condition as part of a collegiate experiment, they are eventually found out and pursued by a shadowy government agency and mercenary Rainbird (Michael Greyeyes) in particular.

Skipping right to the point, 2022's Firestarter intentionally undercuts everything that makes the novel retain any sort of iconic status. Some examples:

-The Lot Six experiment flashbacks (with college-age Mr. & Mrs. McGee) are some of the most compelling material in the book. Here? Relegated to opening-credit background filler.

-The tension between whether or not Charlie should train herself to control her special abilities? Used in a couple of 30-second snippets and then discarded entirely.

-One of the book's hallmarks was the separation (over a long period of time) of Charlie and her beloved father, which sets up a perfect slow-burn to the explosive climax. That isn't even attempted here--instead, all that material is laughable condensed into the film's final 15-20 minutes.

I am very rarely tempted to stoop to 1-star level on any entertainment property, but this movie came dangerously close. The only reason I even bumped it up to 2-stars? Because Efron was perfectly cast and would have been perfect for his role, had not the entire thing around him been a flame-out (pardon the pun).

In short, Firestarter is simply a hollowed-out vehicle for utilizing the King name (and, oddly enough, a John Carpenter-and-son score) to get a few eyeballs. I hate being that crass, but this film deserves it. Not one ounce of care was put into the crafting of interesting characters or plot pacing.