I have some advice for anyone reading this review. Don’t ever be excited for anything, ever! Especially with movies that show alot of potential like Glass, The Lego Movie 2, Us, Detective Pikachu, John Wick 3 and just recently Brightburn. So if you’re looking forward to anything, just don’t, or otherwise you might end up a weird loser like me who complains about movies.
Brightburn, a movie I was excited to see as it didn’t look like a sanitised Disney movie or a sanitised Disney superhero movie. This one was released by a smaller unknown studio and is under the wing of James Gunn so we’re in good hands. The trailers looked interesting as it’s the classic Superman origin story, but he’s a juvenile homicidal maniac.
It’s a nice refreshing take on the superhero genre, but other than that the movie is pretty standard. We’re not given much reason to care for these characters so when superkid goes on his rampage the most interesting part is the fear of being stalked by an all powerful god. The scenes have a pretty eerie presence and Superkid shows no remorse as the movie is quite gruesome.
I’m disappointed that they really didn’t do anything with the kid. He’s a normal kid for all his life until he hears these voices telling him to do bad things and now all of a sudden he’s a complete psychopath. The horror scenes are pretty good, but it’s just so uninteresting where the story takes him. They do somewhat explain that he likes playing hide and seek so that’s why he stalks his victims, but we know little of where he came from and why he is suddenly acting so different.
What’s up with that mosquito mask? Is that where he came from, a planet full of mosquitos??? Was he sent here because the mosquitos were sick of humans smacking them, so they sent a superpowered child? Don’t think about it BC, it’s a dumb horror movie that you’re not supposed to take seriously. The movie is presented in a serious tone so I suspect some thought should have gone into this instead of just a cash grab to fill some pockets. That makes you no better than Disney!
There are some good aspects to this movie. Elizabeth Banks gave the best performance in the movie and she and David Denman had some well acted scenes together. Everything else is pretty passable and it’s well paced. The plot I found myself somewhat invested in, though it got progressively worse as it went. The ending is incredibly predictable as it put itself into the corner of do we really want this franchise to continue?
It’s just painfully bland. It’s another horror movie with an interesting concept that doesn’t fully reach it’s full potential. I know this can be done as The Injustice games are a good example at showing how a great symbol of hope like Superman can go down such a dark path. 5/10. Watch it if you like, but you could do better.
More to come in the coming days as I’m just finishing off some long awaited projects. So until then I have been The Blog Complainer, signing out.
