Brightburn (2019)
Watched 22 June 2019
I really like the idea of a supervillain movie, someone bestowed with powers who expresses a desire to do better, but ultimately cannot overcome their evil.
However, I think ‘Brightburn’ is, for the most part, a massive misfire. Don’t get me wrong, a lot of the elements of this film work quite well. The acting, for example, is pretty stellar across the board, and the establishing stage of the film does a pretty good job of creating tension and intrigue.
My main criticisms of the film are mostly found in the execution. For one, ‘Brightburn’ markets itself as a horror film, and yet nothing about the main premise is all that frightening. To compensate, this film is REALLY loud and filled to the brim with jump scares. However, very little tension is injected into these moments before the scares, so the majority of the “scary” moments are just annoying. I’ll give Brightburn credit, I jumped a lot, but I very much remember being quite irritated each time it happened. Jumpscares aren’t inherently bad, but I think there should be a reason you’re jumping. Most of the time in this film, its the classic misdirection scare, which is intensely irritating.
The message of the film, which seems to be that you should never give up on someone because they’ve taken a dark path, is somewhat lost in the climax of the movie. The father character (who was the first to note that Brightburn doesn’t bleed and cannot be hurt) tries shooting him in the back of the head, a fitting metaphor for what probably should’ve been done with the final draft of the script. He’s killed pretty remorselessly for his troubles, and the mother attempts something similar, using a shard of glass from the pod that Brightburn fell to Earth with to try and kill him. However, when thwarted and threatened with being dropped back down to Earth from space, she lovingly strokes his hair and shows genuine remorse for what she tried to do. I suppose, on one hand, this could be interpreted as “too little, too late”: She already tried to kill him once, effectively giving up her hopes that he can be better. However, this could’ve been used to demonstrate a more compassionate side to Brightburn, yet he drops her heartlessly anyways. I think sparing her, not a total conversion to good but an act of compassion would’ve served the character and the narrative better, allowing Brightburn to show empathy where his mother failed, effectively teaching her the lesson she’d failed to follow from.
Essentially, ‘Brightburn’ could’ve done a lot more with its script, and that’s my main problem. An interesting premise can only really take you so far.
I would give points for using ‘Bad Guy’ by Billie Eilish at the end, but it feels more like pandering than because the song fits. Good song, though.
5/10.
Joe Porter 