Brightburn

Brightburn, Kansas, 2006. Tori (Elizabeth Banks) and Kyle (David Denman) want a child but nature is cruel. One day there's a flash in the sky and a glowing red meteor buries itself in their land. There's a little baba inside. They raise the boy as their own. No one knows their secret. In a place like Brightburn it's easy to hide a skeleton in the closet. As the boy reaches puberty he discovers he has strange powers. Inhuman strength. The power of leviatation. His name? It's Clark Ken........... No, no, no wait, it's not, it's Brandon Breyer and he's not on Earth to use his powers for good.

I thoroughly enjoyed Brightburn. It's silly but it's gleefully and unapologetically nasty fun. Faces fall apart, there's eyeball trauma in here that the great Lucio Fulci would have been proud of and we get to see what happens to a person who gets in the way of somebody who can travel faster than a speeding bullet. It's a far cry from the family friendly Marvel offerings of the past few years and as the story progresses it it goes from comedy fun into a place far more horrific. The version screening in the UK and here is slightly cut btw but only by a few seconds. It's not based on any comic book in particular but it hits all the beats you'd expect an origin story to hit and it does it all in a very succinct 90 minutes. In an era of 180 minute long epics it's brevity feels like a breath of fresh air.

It's very much a film for 2019 too. Young Brandon is the epitome of spoiled male privilege. He sees what he wants and he takes it and woe betide the people (mostly women) who get in his way. An embarrassed and rushed talk about the birds and the bees with his Da sets him down a dark path and its a scene that stresses the importance of clear and open communication. So many of today's societal issues could be nipped in the bud if people were willing to properly talk. But nope, and so cycles of harm continue. It's a testament to the skill of screenwriter James Gunn that he can fit these telling little character moments into a short movie without them feeling jarringly rushed or out of place.

Good performances make it work too. The silliest things can be made palatable when you've good cast to ground it all and who will really sell the more outlandish moments. David Denham is a great everyman. A big burly all American with the beard and the shoulders. The type of father who's supposed to make you feel safe and who's worldview is shaken to it's core when things don't go exactly as planned. The always reliable Elizabeth Banks has reached the mammy stage of her career and like everything else she does she does it well. Her love for her son is never in doubt, even when the shit hits the fan. Jackson A. Dunne as Brandon is a creepy little bastard. A blank facade hiding the type of evil usually ignored in favour of world domination. In his quieter one on one moments he's effective too. The words "You cannot do this" are rarely chilling but he makes it work.

It's only when old tropes of the horror and superhero genres are recycled that Brightburn stutters. Characters are introduced who you know will be dead or dying later, they only exist to be meat for the grinder. You don't care about them or their fate and they take away from the smaller and more intimate family moments. Then at the end the filmmakers feel the need to tie proceedings into a wider universe of characters in a moment that will make your eyes roll out of your head. It might involved a highly entertaining and very familiar genre face but it feels like bandwagon jumping at it's most cynical. You know, there's nothing wrong with being a one-off. Not everything has to be kickstarting a franchise. It's something Brightburn doesn't need. An R-rated scifi horror about a strange kid was never going to be a big money spinner and should have been left as it's own thing.

Issues aside there's plenty to like about Brightburn. On the surface it's dark and sinister but underneath there's some food for thought too. It's a film aimed at a spoiled generation who've never heard the word no. They could learn something from it. Most of them won't watch it though. It's just not shiny enough.