Brightburn is a film about an angry young boy with superhuman powers who decides to murder a lot of people.
Whilst being presented as a James Gunn project, Gunn really only has a producer credit here. The film is directed by David Yarovesky, who is relatively unknown aside from a small sci-fi/horror thing he did in 2014. It’s written by Brian and Mark Gunns, apparently the Gunn family is quite big.
The film is basically a hypothetical. It raises the question of ‘what if Superman came to Earth and it turned out he was evil?’ The foundation of the plot is basically the same. An alien craft containing a baby crash lands in rural Kansas and is found by a married couple who adopt him as their own. The couple are Tori (Elizabeth Banks) and Kyle (David Denham). They seem to lead a relatively normal life with their newly adopted child, Brandon. That is until Brandon turns 12-years-old and suddenly begins something of a transformation as the alien ship they keep hidden under their barn seems to transmit information to him – “take the world”. The thing about Brandon is that he’s basically Superman. He can fly, he has superhuman strength, speed, he can shoot lasers out of his eyeballs. So when he decides to have a prepubescent temper tantrum, mum and dad can’t do a heck of a lot other than tell him to go to his room and hope that he listens.
Things get progressively darker, Brandon gets more out of control and essentially sociopathic as he shows no care or empathy for those around him, and people begin to die horrible, horrible deaths at the hands of young Brandon. It is an interesting take. The idea of Superman coming to earth but actually being evil is interesting because short of finding a ton of kryptonite, there’s really nothing that the human race can do. The new TV show ‘The Boys’ explores this quite a bit as well (and is a great binge watch). The positivity and hopefulness of comic books are nice, but we’re seeing more realistic takes. If someone had these god-like powers, there’s a good chance that they’re not going to be a nice, friendly boy scout about it. They may be like Brandon, a selfish kid who sees himself as superior to everyone else.
One of the problems in this film is that things seem a bit mixed when it comes to Brandon’s motivations. Is he doing this evil, murderous stuff because the space ship is telling him to and is having a negative influence? Or is it that Brandon’s hitting puberty and he doesn’t know how to handle it? Or maybe it’s more simple and Brandon is really just a dick. It seems like his upbringing for the first 12-years would suggest that he was a perfectly normal, if maybe a little introverted, boy. So I think we’re supposed to take this as more that his alien invader side has taken over, but the movie is quite vague in that regard. While his ship tells him to “take the world”, Brandon is really only interested in going around and punishing people that he believes has wronged him.
Tonally, the film is all over the place as well. It tries to balance that line of horror meets comedy, and there were times that I laughed out loud in this movie. The thing is, after laughing, I had to stop and wonder if I was meant to laugh at that scene. They’ve cast typically comedy actors in this movie with Banks and Denham largely coming from comedy and sitcom backgrounds, and Matt Jones (Badger from Breaking Bad) also has a role in the film. The thing is, they have these comedy actors playing it totally straight. There was a sequence where Matt Jones is getting in his car and attempting to get away from Brandon, and I was really struggling to tell if I was meant to be feeling suspense here or laughing at the scene. It does have that James Gunn ‘Super’ vibe where it’s completely dry, but I knew when the film expected me to laugh in that and that was mostly played as a dark comedy. Brightburn, on the other hand, is trying to serve a lot of different masters and be a lot of things, and in doing so I feel like it may have missed the boat in being a purely effective horror film. As far as the horror goes, there isn’t exactly a lot of suspense to it, but there’s a fair chunk of over the top gore.
My biggest gripe with the film is the ending. Without going too far into spoiler territory, it is a very grim ending, which in itself is fine. But I can’t help but feel that they went with the ending that they did in order to keep the film open for sequels. During the credits, we get to see Michael Rooker playing a conspiracy theorist crackpot rambling about different superheroes and dropping mention of the Crimson Bolt from ‘Super’. Yarovesky has since come out and said that if the film’s a success, then they would look at expanding the Brightburn universe. I am tired of cinematic universes and endless franchises. And Brightburn, I feel, has no legs beyond its initial concept and I struggle to fathom any real interest in a sequel. But maybe I’m wrong.
As a standalone horror film, Brightburn is fine. It is very flawed when it comes to tone and story decisions, but they at least tried some different things here and I could still see a lot of people digging it. The performances from Denham and Banks were both good though, so that’s a positive. And I do like the idea and concept. They’re trying interesting things and the movie kept me all the way up until the end, despite it’s problems. If you’re someone who enjoys gratuitous gore and superheroes then you might enjoy this film.
Rating: ★★1/2
Zero Stars 