Firestarter

Of the numerous Stephen King adaptations we got the 80s, you'd have to think that the cry to update 1984's Firestarter was quite faint indeed.  However, it was somehow picked up by genre producer Jason Blum, and here is a cheap-looking and ultimately disappointing take on a story that inspired a disappointing film already 38 years ago. 

Ryan Kiera Armstrong steps into the role previously filled by Drew Barrymore in the original as Charlie, a seemingly-innocent little girl with pyrokinetic powers.  She was born with these powers, because her parents Andy (Zac Efron) and Vicky (Sydney Lemmon) were experimented on by a shady government agency back in college, and due to side effects, both of them developed psychic abilities.  Andy has the ability to control the minds of others, while Vicky can levitate objects with telekinesis.  Both of them have been on the run from the government ever since, and have been living "off the grid".  Now that Charlie is 11, her abilities are starting to grow in strength, and are getting harder to control.  While at school, she is bullied by a boy who's just begging to be flame broiled.  Instead, little Charlie runs to the restroom, where she loses control, and lets off a massive fireball.  The incident obviously makes headlines, and the family finds themselves on the run now that the agency knows their location.

The head of the agency, Captain Hollister (Gloria Reuben) hires assassin John Rainbird (Michael Greyeyes), a former test subject of the same experiment as the parents, after them to bring Charlie back to them, and to kill the parents if necessary.  While on the run, Charlie will have to learn to channel and control her developing powers, to the point that the movie starts to resemble a comic book origin story.  In fact, at one point, she's called the first "real live superhero".  Screenwriter Scott Teems (Halloween Kills) tries to play up the Sci-Fi angle here, going for more of an adventure tone than sheer suspense.  In the process, he loses what tension there is to the story.  This is a dry and bland adaptation that does little to truly explore these characters and ideas, or Charlie's development from a frightened little girl to a master fireball manipulator, which seems to happen in about a minute during a montage.

This Firestarter is not slavishly faithful to the original story or the earlier adaptation, but what it does new is not exciting or thrilling.  Even worse is the direction by Keith Thomas (an indie horror and music video director making his mainstream film debut), who incorporates static close ups of whoever is talking whenever possible.  Say what you will about the 1984 film, but you can't deny that the movie's climax where young Charlie uses her powers to their fullest to lay waste to her tormentors is a high point in an otherwise forgettable movie.  The fact that it used some very difficult practical fire effects and that no stuntmen were injured makes it all the more impressive.  In the 2022 remake, the climax is supremely underwhelming.  Not only are the effects cheesy and heavily CG, but Thomas shoots things so tightly that it's sometimes hard to tell what's happening, or to whom.

What we end up with is a remake that we not only didn't need, but is also bland in its effort to generate excitement in the audience.  The performances and dialogue fail to breathe life into the leaden material, and the lifeless direction only rams the mediocrity of it all home.  The only thing that does stand out is the music score, which was provided by John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter, and Daniel Davies.  The neat touch about John Carpenter getting to score this is that he was the original choice to direct the earlier film, but was dropped when the studio developed cold feet after his 1982 film of The Thing underwhelmed at the box office.  It often comes across that the composers understood the mood the movie was supposed to be going for better than the filmmakers did, and give a memorable score that honestly belongs in a better movie than this.

The movie is not terrible, as it's far too forgettable to create anger in its audience.  It simply passes by in a very slow 94 minutes, then sends the audience home unfulfilled.  Given the prices for going to the movies these days, that's too much to ask for to partake in such an underwhelming experience.

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