Review: Bright Burn (2019)

Stars: Elizabeth Banks, David Denman

Budget: 7million

Directed By: James Gunn

There's been many times that superman has been portrayed as evil, bad or just not caring. Bright burn shows us just what could seriously go wrong if he truly did go right off the rails.
I'm not talking anything we've previously seen either, this film takes the premise and runs with it. Whatever you think about a bad superman x100 for this movie.
It's written and directed by all the Gunn's, with James directing, the other two writing. I have been comparing it to superman as I think this is as close as you can get without copyright lol.
Though aside from some blatant copies it does have its own differences too. The main difference being is this is a mash up genre horror and comic book, something rarely if ever seen before. This is a gruesome movie in its final act with shocking moments. It does kind of fail on the horror front until the final act, though it's fun from about midway where he starts to discover he does actually have super powers.
It's very slow in the first two acts for which it will lose some score for. Also the story kind of diverges once things take a turn for the worse. Which I'll touch on in the main review, so let's get on with it!

A couple who we see have obviously been having trouble conceiving a child are seemingly blessed when a child falls right out of the sky into their laps. Yes they are an almost cookie copy of John and Martha Kent, yet on closer inspection they are different people just in the same situation.
Plus their names are different Tori and Kyle Breyer! Their farm is in Brightburn, Kansas too so the film isn't named after their last name as thought it might be (don't forget i'm from the UK i don't know everywhere in the US) It's not fully explained where he's from or how he came here but it's not really needed either.
12 years pass where everything seems peachy, they are living as a reasonably normal family they are having a nice time as a family. Then the dreaded puberty hits, Brandon (which the named him, same name as the son I lost several years ago to SIDs that put a smile on my face) starts to develop his powers. Becoming super strong and seemingly invincible.

He starts of by doing things by accident (or seemingly), then moving onto freaking his folks out or just experimenting. like chewing a fork, ramming his hand into a spinning lawnmower blade and possibly killing lots of chickens. He is one night also caught sleep walking by Tori towards the barn where his spaceship is stored. (this happens a few times throughout the film)
Brandon quickly starts to become more rowdy as his powers grow, finding disturbing images under his bed forces Kyle to have the puberty/birds&bees talk with his son. Though he kind of immediately misinterprets this as he can watch whoever he wants.
He goes outside the window of a girl (Caitlyn) he likes at school watching her do things, seemingly uncaring even when she see's him there. Due to this when they do a trust fall exercise in school Caitlyn just lets him fall to the ground. He then proceeds to super strength smoosh her hand which gets him kicked out of school for a few days.

Brandons father is all the while getting more and more suspicious and weary of his son's motives and actions. Tori however seems oblivious to it, well more in denial with love for the son she could not have. It is a bit off putting how quickly Kyle turns to disbelieving of his son, seen a few people complain about that but its not like he's ever portrayed as stupid guy.
The girls mother wants Brandon to be arrested, they settle on him having counseling by the school counselor, who is also his auntie Merilee, to judge his mental state.

This is where the movie really picks up steam as Brandon goes right off the rails. when Brandon goes to his spacecraft, discovering his origins he hurts himself on the metal of it. Tori tries to explain to him and that they will always love him no matter what. He goes mad destroys pictures of him and his family declaring he hates them.
He goes to Caitlyns house and declares his love for her, he says that he will show her sights of the world with his special powers. She explains that he can't see her due her mother Erika banning her. He leaves a flower for her while he flies over to the diner where her mom works.
Brandon tortures her with no remorse before killing her (unfortunately off screen, though this is about the only one off screen every other kill is pretty visceral). He (stupidly) leaves a symbol on the window where he killed her which gets the police more and more involved as he starts to use it more often. In a later session with Merilee it seems like Brandon has no remorse over the people dying or increasingly erratic actions she does decide to report these finding to the police.
Brandon however goes to her to try and get her to stop sending the report. interrupted he hides but is found by his uncle Noah. He berates Brandon then goes to take him home in the car, while driving there Brandon causes a car accident which he walks away from unscathed of course. Brandon uses Noah's blood to draw the symbol once again.

Suffice to say the sheriff, Brandon's dad and the other police quickly come to suspect Brandon and begin to move in on him. It doesn't end well. I wont spoil anymore as compared to a lot of other critics I quite enjoyed this film. Yes it has a lot of slow build up but it's almost worth it for the pay off, is it a true horror film though?
Almost it has gruesome horror like moments, the antagonist is scary when he's bad. It's hard to say as this film didn't scare as such but then hardly any horror film does these days. Now did it shock me?
Certainly which a lot of good horror films certainly do, do.
If i gave half stars this would be a middling ground film, the film certainly isn't a two star film though so even with some minor flaws i will award it a 3 out of 5 stars with a recommendation to watch but may be wait until it's on dvd or Netflix.

THN: The Dumbing and Watering Down of Reboots/Remakes

With the recent remake/reboot of child's play I have to write and make my voice heard somewhat.

There seems to be something, like some kind of mental block in people involved in these films retellings. Whether it's the executives, the script writers or maybe even the directors choices to make these changes.

It's 9/10 the wrong thing they change or dumb down the wrong type of things. Strangely some of these movies fail in trying to over explain some points which also adds to their failing, more on that later.

Horror movies are rife with reboots and remakes maybe even the odd reimagining. What are the things that I've seen that really degrade or sour the originals plots, storylines or characters.

Child's Play:

Take child's play for instance I'll admit I haven't seen it as it's not out yet at the time of me writing this article. But what I have learned of it which may or may not be right is few things I cannot forgive.
The Chucky design, he looks like an anime character, massive eyes and mouth, to me just doesn't like right. the original animatronic chucky seemed more expression full than the newer bland face face of the newer doll.
Good guys replaced by buddi it's not a major change but why change it? Good guys make you think it could be we do no evil, Buddies can be assholes lol.

My main grievance is our titular Chucky is not a killer possessed doll anymore. No it's now a killer ai, now to me that's how you really dumb down a plot. No longer do you have a wise cracking humanised doll you have a bland killer robot.

Now I say bland because no matter how much sass or wise cracking they stick in you'll be asking yourself how did an AI gone wrong learn to be like that?

Maybe there's certain elements that have yet to be seen of this movie that will help explain that situation, only time will tell. The bonuses are that Mark Hamill is voicing Chucky and he's a stellar voice actor. Also Aubrey Plaza is staring as Andy's mum she's always good.
For now I have to wait and see what this film holds in store, you'll see what that entails when I do my inevitable review of the film.

Nightmare on Elm Street:


This remake suffers from something, well two or three something's in my book. Over explaining certain points and removing a much needed tongue in cheek nature that a supernatural dream killer needs. The over explaining is one thing that really irks me in this film. We all know Freddy Krueger was a "child killer" hinted at that it was a little bit more than that too, see hinted at. The newer remake was pretty blatant in its saying he's a child rapist. We know that but we don't need it thrust in our faces especially with how serious the rest of the film is.
They tried to make Freddy scary that's another thing wrong or right, is his look in this where as h does look more effectively burnt I prefer his older look but that's just me, also being more scary? That had been done on Wes cravens new nightmare, pretty well too. Yet even that film managed to turn a tongue in cheek joke (literally a tongue out of a phone) into something more serious but with still that hint of humor of oh look a tongue in a phone!

Friday the 13th:


Now onto Friday the 13th remake, a remake/reboot I can actually get behind. Some people don't like it for the dumbing down of Jason's back story. This is where it differs for me, as strangely these parts seem like more of a recap to me because in this films case (to me at least) feels like a straight up sequel. Everything from his look to the way he acted was a picture perfect Jason.
Yeah that's right it's like Friday the 13th 9 1/2 to me I really do see this movie as and really feel like it's just more of what I like. Mindless masked killer goodness. That's pretty much all I have I have to say about this film. I do realise what I said can also be used as a detriment to the film instead of pluses.

Halloween:


The latest reboot was, good, it had solid acting was nice to see Micheal back with no silly runes or masked society involved. No women riding white horses as in the previous two remakes. The problem I have with these movies is that they ignore sequels.
I know they can say oh this starts from after the first movie, or second whatever unfortunately those movies still exist. You can't just expect people to forget about them.
Where does movie now go in my collection?
In-between one and two?
The thing with Halloween too is this isn't the first time they've done this either, H20 had us ignoring everything after a certain point too.
You can't just jam a new film in the middle of an established series especially one that ignores some past events. If your not good enough to write a sequel that involves most of what went before is it worth trying?

All in all i'm not against remakes, reboots, slot ins, whatever you want to call them. All i ask is you don't mess it up keep it as faithful to the series it's from as much as possible.