Brightburn review: a devilish child-like Superman out to destroy the world…

For his directorial debut, remember, Slither, Gunn paid tribute to 50s B-movies with a small-town horror about evil alien worms intent on overtaking the world as we know it, and while he has risen the ranks of classy directors in Hollywood since; smoothing out his edges to take charge of the beloved Guardians of the Galaxy and, er, maybe not, the Suicide Squad franchises, he remains an unabashed horror fan at heart.

Written by his brother, Brian Gunn, and cousin Mark Gunn, the film flips the Superman narrative on its head, setting us up with an almost identical scenario before taking us in a far darker direction.

And it’s very much of a purposeful riff that immolates and plays with the Superman mythos as the marketing has already suggested.

In the small town of Brightburn, Martha and Jonathan Kent stand-ins, Tori (Elizabeth Banks) and Kyle (David Denman) are struggling to conceive, and after a meteor falls from the sky with a baby inside, they think their luck has changed. But as their adopted child Brandon (Jackson A Dunn) grows up, they realize that something is horribly wrong.

A clear-cut Man of Steel origin story transpires until Brandon, quite literally, follows his cryptic dreams to carry out a horrifying plan that may or may not include omnicide.

A FEW TEETHING PROBLEMS:

It takes three deaths and one horrible maiming for anybody to call 911 about Brandon Breyer (Jackson A. Dunn), a gawky 12-year-old with super-powers and a fierce-out-of-this-world temper. Granted, a local sheriff (Gregory Alan Williams) does show up right after Brandon’s first (very public) act of violence. But generally speaking, Williams’ laughably useless Sheriff Deever takes his sweet time while investigating Brandon, but, Culturedemandsgeeks guesses that’s small-town life.

Brandon’s parents, Kyle, and Tori (David Denman and Elizabeth Banks) are especially unsure about what might be happening to their kid, even though they know that he’s an alien—who, like Superman, mysteriously crash-landed when he was just a baby—and is therefore not completely familiar.

Suprinsgly, there is no “why,” however, for better or worse. “Brightburn” doesn’t need to explain why Brandon does what he does. He is an alien from a different solar system. How could we expect him to have the same moral compass as us? “Good versus evil” isn’t just a dated superhero genre trope, it’s still a reverie many of us blindly adhere to in the real world.

And it works…

While the actual plot, squeezed into an often rushed and minuscule 91-minute runtime, doesn’t spend much time pretending what it is trying to convey to the audiences. There are some nice visual nods, including some J. J. Abrams lens flare and a sweeping rural landscape, the central house interchangeable with that of the Kents.

But Brightburn is more interested in the raw gristle and grime, and to Yarovesky’s credit, and with Sony behind him, a candid campaign featuring Mr. Gunn too, he has opted for a very hard 16R rating wrapped up in a cozy PG-13 cotton-candy stick.

As Brandon delves further into darkness and he begins to explore his villainy, there are some audaciously grisly deaths, (those with a phobia of eyes should, well, look away during one where a waitress is stalked by the lad), including one particularly memorable car accident that ranks as one of the most inventively gory sequences in a studio movie we have seen for a while.

While rushing at certain times, Yarovesky does conjure a sustained atmosphere and manages to do extraordinary things with a minuscule $6m budget!!!

FINAL THOUGHTS:

As a comic book fan and a horror movie buff, this movie nailed it for Culturedemandsgeeks, and we will definitely be watching Brightburn multiple times in the future. As mentioned, the Gunns and Yarovesky don’t lift their feet off of the proverbial gas pedal in the gore department and the ending is well, left wide open for a second film.

Please. Please. Please let there be another film.

4.5/5 STARS