by: Ryan Geary
You’d think after the latest one made over $2B, we wouldn’t have to assert this, but I believe the niche of superhero movies is over. Instead it has expanded so significantly, so tremendously, that much like the futuristic-dystopian-teenager-sagas, it makes the mouths of most studios salivate; you can almost see the dollar signs in their eyes inflate like the cartoons of yesteryear. It’s a full-on genre now and forever. Yet, unlike the niche of series like Hunger Games, Divergent, and the latest I can recall in The 4th Wave, the superhero genre has so many outlets left to explore and so many ways to get there. We’ve seen the classic good guy beats bad guy. We’ve seen the coming-of-age origin story. We’ve seen the World Left in Wreckage. We’ve even seen the Passing of the Mantle. And now, in Brightburn, we’ve seen a supervillain born and bred to be exactly that in the modern-day world.
I didn’t watch any trailers before seeing this, just to ensure a blank slate for review.
Additionally, I’m locking down the connections to other superhero movies (widely known and not-so-known) as best as I can to give all the fairness and impartiality to this original take as can be granted. Obvious and subtle nods are noted of course, as I’m sure is the intention of director David Yarovesky. If you’re not familiar with this name, his more noted works are the 2014 Sci-Fi Horror “The Hive” and 2004 Comedy Short “A Funny Thing Happened at the Quick Mart”. To Yarovesky’s credit (as he also wrote both listed works), these were enjoyable and easy to appreciate in their given categories.
Now. Let’s see what kind of ride we find in Brightburn… (Please read both the NONSPOILER and SPOILER REVIEWS for the full review)
*NONSPOILER REVIEW*
If you were expecting a dark superhero story to be graphic and lending itself to horror- you are correct. It takes a while to “build to the break” so to speak, but once it happens things get harder, and harder, and bloodier. It made sense in terms of both story progression and gravitas of the actions- but even still I felt some of the linger on the gore was more than necessary. Parts of it reminded me of Slither (which also starred Elizabeth Banks and was also helmed by James Gunn), where it wanted to mess with you and gross you out just because it could. Even the jump scares had the shock-pop intent from Slither.
You’ll find an abundance of superhero nods from wearing the baby blanket the superhero is found with as a cape to displaying how ill-equipped law enforcement always appears to be in dealing with these messes, to (my favorite) the satirizing of pre-emptive franchise expansion plans. The obvious story parallels are to Superman but there comes a fork in the road where Clark Kent went left, Brandon Breyer went right, and all hell broke loose on one of the roads. Guess which one. That said, the developments OF the abilities were used in interesting takes- if a little underdeveloped. After the film is over, you’re not entirely sure if you’ve seen all of Brightburn’s abilities. Or weaknesses, for that matter.
The characters and the setting really make the sell. Elizabeth Banks and David Denman have a believable chemistry as a pair of adoptive parents to an increasingly restless preteen. Even better is the chemistry between Banks and her adoptive son, played by the ambitious Jackson A. Dunn. Distractingly poor child actors are a bit of a sore spot for me, and it’s refreshing to see a kid really leaning into the social outcast who just figured out his skin can’t break, among other things.
Finally, as a child of the Midwest and a frequenter of rural Kansas in my youth- they nailed the setting. There’s a scene with Denman drinking and playing pool in a bar with his buddies and I swear I’ve been to that bar before. The houses are modern rustic instead of “Hollywood presented modern rustic”, and each setting matched the map down to the stretch barn on the Breyer homestead. If nothing else, this movie breaths on beat and the effort that went into making this supervillain origin story into a believable modern tale of relationships, cathartics, and facing your choices, was worth a once view.
Rating: 7 out of 10 for the Common Man/Reverse Superhero Story
***SPOILER REVIEW***
Right up front, I will say that I needed a few days to process how I felt about the movie after I saw it. Maybe it climaxed in a way that I wasn’t expecting but should have. Maybe I felt the overall execution was a little too much POWER and RUSH instead of BUILD and RIDE. But I wasn’t disappointed when I left the theater, or confused to the point of annoyed. I was caught off-guard by the weird mixture of good and not-so-good in the story and all of the things around it. Let me expand a little more on what I said above and we’ll see if I make any fair points.
From the get-go of arriving crash-landed in an alien spaceship, adopted by a farmer and his wife, being drawn to his hidden spacecraft, and discovering super strength and invulnerability as his first encounter with the superhuman storyline- yes this is obviously supposed to parallel with Superman. But the point de facto made early on is that the people surrounding Brandon Breyer were not the perfectly moral and upstanding citizens that made up Smallville, KS. These people are residents of Brightburn, KS. They have mortgages that require them to work doubles at the town diner. The kids pick on the smart kid who eats alone at the lunch table. Parents want what is best for their kids, especially when their kid has their hand completely crushed by another kid or they discover their kid can break a set of ribs by pushing in retaliation of being told to go to their room. And it’s all completely believable. No one in this story has jumps in logic. Rushed logic, sure, but logic all the same.
What we needed to see between the positive comment made by the female love-interest to the Dad birds-and-bees talk to the creepy romantic attempts via sneaking through said girl’s second floor window was a development in that relationship. Sure, the creepy smart kid may jump the gun with his intentions- but SHOW US what the kid’s trying to do. SHOW US that he’s getting better at lying, or why he feels the need to use this newfound violent ability to maim and kill. With inference, you can figure out that it is one of two stories: he, an alien, has been taught by his parents that good is good and bad is bad- but as an alien he only sees what it is supposed to be and feels no obligation to conform to the notions. Or, he was taught the same thing, found that it failed him, and sees that his horrible graphic decisions have better results for him. “Because he is special”. I dig it. But I wanted more development in Brandon. After his Dad tried to shoot him in the back of the head, you see the aggravation and betrayal spread across his face. But then he tortures his Dad like a cat with a mouse and then kills him very personally with heat vision through the face. No dialogue or follow-up aside from a “please, Brandon, please” from the Dad.
Banks, a dang good choice for the Mom, shows a resistance to believing her alien son is a psychopath. But once she comes to believe it- that’s it there too. She tries to lull her son- whom she still loves- but no dialogue of expansion beyond her repeated mantra. Then her killer son, who has plenty of time to say more than a word with the very obvious anguish in his eyes, just drops her to her death from 30,000 ft. I must emphasize, these scenes were impressive- but it could’ve been MORE impressive with a degree of wholeness to the characters.
Like I said above, there were some obvious Slither elements to this film. After the car crash, we’re watching a man rapidly bleeding out of his face while desperately holding his broken-off jaw and audibly choking on his tongue for what felt like a solid minute. It reminded me of the slug-whip aftermath in Slither, where the alien swashes its tail at a dude and we’re watching his layers of skin unzip like a pair of pants- only his pants are actually his belly-button to the creases in his forehead. It felt a little much. Not as “trying for effect” as watching Erika try to extract the piece of glass from her pupil for a minute, but there was definitely a strenuous theme going on between those two pieces.
I feel as though I may have been droning on, but I did enjoy the movie for what it was- its own new beast. In the vein of Chronicle, Super, and to a lesser-extent All Superheroes Must Die, there was a definite solid attempt to make this superhero movie not like every live-action DC or Marvel movie that’s been audience-wide for the past three decades.
There’s a solid foundation if there are any plans to make this idea something bigger in the future. It is clear to me that focusing on the characters around the super makes the weight of the super’s actions that much more impressionable and effective. This was an earnest try into something new of the genre.
Graphic, honest, and unexpected.
Rating: 7 out of 10
Let me know if you agree, disagree, or what you’d like to see reviewed next. Until next time,
thank you for reading!