Firestarter

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.

The biggest mistake of Blumhouse Productions was to dismiss Fatih Akin, whom they considered as the director of this project. It could have been a very good movie, but the resulting production turned out to be a decent movie from TV movies.

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.

Right, well this was a fully and wholly unnecessary remake of the 1984 movie of the same name.

As I stumbled upon this 2022 movie from writer Scott Teems and director Keith Thomas, I have to admit that my immediate thought was 'oh no, another unnecessary remake, just like the 2015 remake of "Poltergeist"'. Yet I opted to sit down and watch the movie, and actually give director Keith Thomas a fair chance with this 2022 version of "Firestarter".

But as I just said above, "Firestarter" was a very unnecessary remake, and if you have seen the 1984 classic with Drew Barrymore, David Keith, Heather Locklear, Martin Sheen and George C. Scott, then you can easily skip on the 2022 version, believe you me.

Sure, if you are unfamiliar with the 1984, then there is some entertainment value to the 2022 "Firestarter", no doubt about it. But for us that have seen the original, then this movie was just water under the bridge.

The 2022 movie stars Zac Efron and Ryan Kiera Armstrong. I can't fathom why they opted for Efron for this movie, but Armstrong was actually nicely cast. The movie also have some good performances from veterans such as Kurtwood Smith, John Beasley, Gloria Reuben and Michael Greyeyes.

Visually then "Firestarter" was nice, of course it was, given it is special effects and CGI made in 2022. But that doesn't alleviate the fact that "Firestarter" is a redundant movie.

My rating of this watered-down remake lands on a bland five out of ten stars.

I grew up on the Drew Barrymore version. And it was okay for its time. I still remember Heather Locklear and the ironing board. I remember the creepy nature of George C. Scott. And the barn climax.

This movie I can barely recall and I just finished it. Oh yeah, I lost interest at the cat part with Zac Efron saying "good job"....what the actual huh?!

I think this movie just petered out. It's unnecessary, generic, shallow and adds nothing at all.

Watch a yule log on youtube instead.