Brightburn (2019) - Movie Review

After a fairly lengthy and social media drama fuelled fiasco, filmmaker James Gunn appears to be back in action and at full force. Not only is he returning to Marvel for the next Guardians Of The Galaxy entry as well as snagging the next Suicide Squad movie for DC, he has also given his blessing and a production credit to today’s film, a superpowered horror flick written by James’ brother and cousin that takes a look at a familiar superhero origin story and twists it on its head into something worthy of horror. I’ll admit that I was very hyped to check this one out, seeing it as the re-entry point for a creative mind who got into the alt-right’s line of fire, but as I’ll get into, the results are more muddled than they should be.

Those who check this out wanting some good scares will certainly leave satisfied, as this is a very intense piece of horror cinema. Writers Brian and Mark Gunn take the basics of the Superman origin story and, by shifting focus towards the darker implications of that narrative, manage to generate terror out of a story that most filmgoers will be familiar with to some degree. A child not borne of this world with powers beyond anything that mankind has yet achieved; looking at it fundamentally, it’s kind of unsettling and the film pushes that forward to great effect. Bonus points for the use of gore, which not only is well-utilised but relies more on practical effects than CGI. Or at the very least, it looks good enough to feel real, which makes the more graphic moments really stick.

However, that same understanding of the Superman story also gives way to its own list of problems, starting with the parallels between this story and the origin of the Man Of Steel. Said parallels are basically 1:1, from his arrival on Earth in a pod, to being found by two Kansas farmers, even his powers are all Superman’s. The only exception to that being his ability to fuck with electrical devices, but considering Superman’s bullet-deflecting invulnerability was pinned down in the comics as a result of a bioelectrical field, it’s easy to extrapolate that into what we see here.

So, yeah, it’s Superman but evil and a child; it’s like Chronicle by way of The Good Son. Knowing how important the parents are to the Superman mythos, basically giving him the moral compass and ethical code that defined him as a person and as a hero, all of this could be a great setup for examining a simple What If? scenario, one where his parents weren’t as nurturing. However, for as much as the script gets right when it comes to what it’s subverting, it puts far less emphasis on the actual subversion.

We are given hints early on about some of the specifics regarding the young Brandon and his origins, using the analogy of a wasp in a bee hive, but for the most part, it’s played a little too straight-forward to be as engrossing as it could be. After a while, Brandon stops feeling like an actual character and more like Macaulay Culkin in the aforementioned Good Son: He’s evil and that’s all he’s got. It’s essentially a nature vs. nurture take on the original story, only one where nature wins out only because there’s nothing to stand against it.

If the writers went for a more dubious route, one where the likely-hormonal and puberty-stricken Brandon was more conflicted about his motives, his powers and his place in the world, this could’ve been the Unbreakable for this generation as far as re-examining the legends we all know. But because of how the familial relationship is developed and shown, it feels like one big missed opportunity.

Don’t get me wrong, the performances themselves are fine: Elizabeth Banks as the desperately-in-denial mother is quite good, David Denman as the fearful father works nicely, and Jackson A. Dunn as Brandon is very effective and very creepy. But as the film carries on, any chances for the film to look into the role of the parents in who this child is, since he has a far greater connection to his Earth parents than where he originally came from (again, one of the key points when it comes to Superman), end up falling behind the film’s apparent need to emphasise its main influence and what it hopes to subvert, rather than actually subverting it in any substantial way.

The result of all of this is an admittedly good sit, albeit a rather frustrating one. It’s the kind of film where, in the moment as you’re watching it, it is quite engaging and delivers plentiful moments of shock and dread, but once the end credits arrive, it begins to unravel in the mind and feel more and more like something is missing. It’s a What If? story where the question it seeks to ask unfortunately ends up being the one the audience asks once they realise the true potential this story has.