It makes sense that in the age of the superhero movie, someone would look to make a new version of Firestarter, seemingly the Stephen King novel that comes closest to being a superhero story (or supervillain story, however you may dice it). Of course, Firestarter doesn’t fit neatly into the modern contours of the superhero genre, much as it may read as a standard origin tale for someone like the Human Torch -essentially who Charlie McGee, the girl at the centre of things with the telekinetic ability to create and manipulate fire, is comparable to. It’s much too concerned with ethics and government conspiracies and the fear rather than awe of supernatural abilities. Still, a version made today could work, and I noted watching this film -as someone who’s never read the book- what a strong story it is.
Such a shame the movie around it is pretty awful. I don’t know what Blumhouse was thinking with this adaptation, one that feels particularly thin and dispassionate. It’s directed by Keith Thomas from a script by Scott Teems, a co-writer on Halloween Kills, and it has much the same script deficiencies as that film -namely no character is developed all that well and the plotting leaves little to no room to breathe. It’s working with better source material here, but that may even be worse for it as the slivers of potential are so palpable it’s all the more disappointing how dismal the actual execution is.
Firestarter, at least as presented here, is the parents’ story more than the childs’. Andy (Zac Efron) and Vicky McGee (Sydney Lemmon) were volunteers in college of a clinical trial for an experimental agent that went out of control and gave them psychokinetic capabilities. Naturally, their daughter inherited these powers, and specifically can radiate heat and manifest fire. Given it’s a King story, she of course is taught to repress this in the face of severe bullying at school and eventually is the target of a secret government organization wishing to exploit her for nefarious purposes.
The story is well-trodden ground for both King and superheroes (particularly X-Men media) but can still be made compelling if focused in the right way. Yet from the start this film seems to deliberately avoid the most fascinating aspects. It opens bizarrely on Andy discovering Charlie’s powers for the first time as a baby that is played like a jump scare before inserting the flashback trials into montage during the opening credits -which is the first instance where the movie feels like it is robbing the audience of integral character development. Because it is the experimentation and the government abuse that principally differentiates this story from Stephen Kings’ many others about psychic children. It feels like the major theme King was trying to get at was bent around government cover-ups, CIA atrocities, and human rights abuses. This movie cuts to those figures every so often, a director played by Gloria Reuben and for one scene a corrupted scientist played by Kurtwood Smith -though only to emphasize a hollow “don’t try to control what you don’t understand” message that has been played the same way countless times before.
Charlie too, played by Ryan Kiera Armstrong, is shortchanged by this script uninterested in her point-of-view. Consider in Carrie, how even in omniscient perspective, we get a sense of her feelings, her fears and anxieties that better endear us to her. Charlie endures some of the same but is often kept at a distance. Her school experience is the only place one can settle into her mindset, though even then there’s constant distraction in the poor writing -her classmates’ jeers and bullying are hilariously one-note and unbelievable, especially in a modern context, which the movie adapts to haphazardly (there’s a funny excuse given for why the family can’t have internet or cell phones in the 2020s).
The film is not evenly paced much at all, one of those rare instances of an hour and a half movie needing to be longer. All throughout are moments that feel bigger than they are, more significant in emotional resonance or character development or tension. Such as one point where Charlie accidentally burns a cat and has to put it down -it’s striking and probably ought to be traumatizing, but never comes close to that effect. Same for a moment of self-sacrifice by Andy in the third act. And more than a diminished impact, there is an overwhelming sense the story is just missing scenes. During an interlude at the farm of an old man Irv (John Beasley), Charlie stumbles upon his paralyzed wife for a hot second and then later can communicate her thoughts to him as though they’d had a whole telepathic conversation. This also appears to be the case during the time where she’s left alone in the woods. This movie has no patience and it never takes a moment to pause and sit with its’ characters as they stew in an emotion. And it makes the climactic sequence, which should be very high stakes and thrilling, positively dull.
But perhaps the source for all this is just that nobody seems all that committed. The film is not well-cast: occasionally you can see Armstrong really trying, and Michael Greyeyes as the ruthless bounty hunter Rainbird is probably the most compelling figure in the narrative. But Zac Efron is badly miscast as Andy, nowhere a convincing parent and certainly not one worth actually caring about (his psychological abuse of his daughter is yet another thing the film refuses to grapple with); and nobody else really lends anything substantive to their parts -Beasley’s performance and manner is such that it suggests the film couldn’t afford Stephen McKinley Henderson. And the direction is rather shoddy too, Thomas choosing for each scene the least interesting way to shoot it. There’s one conversation between two characters that carries on for about five minutes, which is all shot-reverse shot, with the actors’ close-ups composed at the edge of the frame leaving a ton of pointless negative space that just seems incompetent. Other moments of lazy filmmaking recur throughout: the cuts to peoples’ pupils dilating every time Andy uses his powers of cognitive influence being so without subtlety as to come off as condescending. It speaks to such a lack of investment on the part of the artists that can’t help but be transferred to the audience.
I haven’t even touched on the mixed-messaging ethics of the piece or the poor quality of the pyro-special effects, because Firestarter doesn’t care for them any more than I do. There are worse movies that have come out so far this year but none I can think of more thoroughly a waste. Stephen King movies may be a dime a dozen now, but they still ought to be given some consideration, some honest effort. Especially when you go to the trouble of mimicking his font in the title -I don’t doubt some on the production were more keen on that than the movie itself.
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