Brightburn (2019)

MAY 26, 2019

GENRE: ALIEN, SLASHER
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

As movie concepts go, "What if Kal-El became Michael Myers instead of Clark Kent?" is kind of a great one - it allows the filmmakers to use a story everyone knows and then pivot into something different. It's basically the same as Marvel's "What If?" series (as I'm not a big DC reader, I don't know if they had something similar - forgive me if they do), where you'd get something like "What if Spider-Man saved Uncle Ben?" or "What if the Fantastic Four all got the same powers?", and get a quick glimpse of what that'd be like, per the imagination of that issue's writer anyway. It's such an interesting idea that I almost wish Brightburn had made tens of millions of dollars this past weekend, because maybe it'd launch an anthology series of films that had the same core idea, and then one creative team would do something more exciting beyond the one line concept.

Because sadly, if you've seen the trailer for the film, you've basically seen every idea it has - there's really nothing to it beyond which I've already described. It takes the core origin of Superman that you've seen in any number of movies (including/perhaps especially Man of Steel, more on that soon) and gives you a Cliff's Notes version so that they can get to the R-rated switcheroom but then never gets any more ambitious after that. For those who have somehow never seen a Superman origin story, the setup is this: the childless owners of a farm (played by Elizabeth Banks and David Denman) find a crashed spaceship in the woods behind their house one night, and it has what looks like a human baby. They raise it as their own, and as he grows up he discovers he has powers: super strength, heat vision, flight, etc., but to them he's still their son and they want to protect him. In the DC comics and movies, he of course becomes Superman/Clark Kent, a man of justice and principal who uses his powers for good.

In Brightburn, he uses his powers to melt a guy's head, or fly someone up hundreds of feet into the air only to drop them. As to WHY he does these things, the movie never bothers to explain that, but unlike Michael Myers I feel this time we kind of should know what exactly turned him into a murderer. Since the origin is so clearly taken from Superman's, it's puzzling why this film's primary character (named Brandon Breyer) turns out so different from Clark Kent. If it's a nature vs nurture thing, fine, but as we don't ever see the home planet or even learn anything about it, we have to just assume it's an... evil planet? I guess? Banks and Denman are seen to be great and loving parents, even after he starts doing terrible things, so I guess we have to just assume that it's simply in his nature to be an alien killer, and the planet is playing a long con by dropping him to Earth and waiting 12 years for him to do anything murder-y.

It's one of the many things that the film could have taken the time to explore, or even hint at. Instead it just lets Brandon discover a power, use it to kill someone, lie about his whereabouts to his only somewhat suspicious parents, and then repeat the cycle again. Worse, there's no real connective tissue from one sequence to the next, as if everyone just kind of hit a mental reset button in between scenes. At one point early on, Brandon lashes out as his father for not letting him have a birthday gift (a rifle), ruining his birthday party and rightfully pissing the man off - but in the next scene everyone's hunky dory again. And it extends to the other characters too; Brandon visits a classmate who is already afraid of him, and when she mentions her mother not wanting him anywhere near her, he says he'll take care of it and disappears. You'd think the girl would warn her mother, or at least mention it to the cops when the woman turned up missing (it's the lady in the diner you've seen in the trailer), but nope! She's barely even mentioned again.

And that is very frustrating, because each scene on its own is fine, sometimes even quite good, especially when it concerns a character whose fate WASN'T spoiled in the damn trailer. But they don't really add up to much, so as the film went on I found myself less and less interested and basically just mentally checking off when each thing from the trailer happened and in turn what would be left ("Where's that bit where Banks runs to the door to see a cop just as Brandon flies by and whooshes him off? Oh, there it is."). Even the film's closing scene was given away in the spots, so it almost felt like I was watching an extended cut of a film I already saw instead of being engaged by a new story. Such a flimsy narrative can be saved by strong/memorable characters, but that's a miss too; characterization is so thin that at an hour into the movie, Banks' character comes home with a name tag on and it was the first time I was aware she even had a job (what exactly it is is still a mystery).

Also, while the gore gags are great (there's one involving a jaw that KNB, Savini, etc. must be jealous they didn't do first), the stalking parts aren't particularly scary or suspenseful, killing much of the "It's a superhero slasher" appeal for me. If you're a fan of the later Jason movies where you rooted for him and they doubled the body counts, you might be into it, but as I prefer the older ones where the filmmakers were still trying to have some real tension in there, I found it lacking in that department. There are some nice shots here and there, like one of Brandon standing (flying?) at a window as the drapes blow him in and out of visibility, but the stalking is pretty much always the same - he is standing in a spot, then he's gone, then he's right next to the target and kills them. The gimmick gets old after two kills, and the script never bothers to introduce any real wrinkles or surprises. Banks discovers a weakness, but it's a non-starter, and there are no equally powered heroes for him to fight or anything like that - he just does his thing over and over until the movie hits a 90 minute mark, at which point it ends.

So really, the only thing that really kept me engaged was my amusement that producer James Gunn (his brother and cousin wrote the script) convinced Sony to give him a few million bucks to make fun of Zack Snyder, his "partner" from Dawn of the Dead (Gunn's script was rewritten by others once Snyder came on board; I'm not sure if the two ever actually collaborated in a traditional way). Snyder's version of Superman has been (rightfully) criticized for being kind of an asshole, without much regard for the human beings around him, so it seemed to me like Gunn and his crew had the idea of taking it to the next level and turning him into an actual serial killer. Which is very funny, yes, but probably would have worked better as a Funny or Die short film or the one-shot comic book I described. For a feature film, as good as that joke may be, it ultimately wore too thin for me. It's a fine enough one-time watch I guess, but this concept deserved a lot more meat on the bone.

What say you?

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