Review: BRIGHTBURN

Youngish couple in rural Kansas are about to get it awn when something big and fiery crashes into their yard. It's not a meteor, it's a spaceship and there's a human baby in it. A home movie montage later under the credits and we see that they, the Breyers, have adopted young Brandon (their name) and he's now a nice enough twelve year old boy, if a little nerdy and introverted. He's going through puberty and exhibits a mild resentment of the changes but discovers a massive physical strength he's never known before. He's got a crush on a girl in class and there's a bully who taunts him. So, we're kind of Stephen King-ing this, right? Kind of.

After a swift opening premise things get staggered as Brandon's turn to the dark side gets motivated among a lot of quite repetitive scenes of parenting and school life. His force breaks through but there is no struggle of conscience around his violent actions. On the one hand, he's a mixed up kid with a mega punch and on the other he just seems to be moping around on the spectrum. One manifestation of his might is witnessed by his father who recognises it as extraordinary but doesn't bother to mention it to his wife. Everyone has pretty clear suspicions about Brandon being at the centre of some explosive local murders but this often just gets dropped in favour of a few more scenes of normal life. It just seems to meander.

Then again, it did remind me that if the central metaphor is one of the shock of learning you're adopted wasn't Superman also an adoption tale? While I think you'd have to be thick to assume the metaphor equated adoptees with evil you might well be disappointed in how smoothly Brandon manages to cope after the initial shock. Ok, he's turned evil but why? The central trauma of his life isn't enough. Being spurned by his crush (after being very very creepy to her) is a fizzer. Not even the school bully has that much power. Is this a tale of how hard it is to become truly evil in small town America where everything just gets swept under the carpet o' life lessons? If it's because he feels his alienness make him more goddanged alien. If his adoptive mother is so fiercely devoted to him, couldn't that be developed into something frightening? What we get is a series of inconsequential events ending in a dark climax that just feels like more of the same.

The near documentary style of the film with its muted palette and rustic understatement might have served as a compelling contrast with the sci-horror of the theme but it feels like neither side was allowed definition enough to combat the other. We do get some entertaining kills with some powerfully violent imagery. It made me think of the undersung first sequel to The Omen in which the adolescent Damien really struggles with the thing he is becoming. I thought of Chronicle which mixed found footage with superhero origins (with a very believable developing villain) to great effect. I even thought of George A. Romero's magnificent Martin which blended 70s verite cinema with adolescence and possible vampirism. Martin was hundreds of years old but still a confused teenager (but maybe he was just the latter). Young Jackson Dunn in Brightburn seems to do his job according to what his director bids. It's just that he never gets a chance from the film around him.

Oh, and to the two gits at the back in my screening whose whispers rose and fell all through the thing: if you can't get treatment for your sociopathy please develop lifelong tinnitus. It's how the rest of the world experiences you.