🎵 We! We’re flying recklessly tonight! Go on and take me higher. You can be my Firestarter, ohhh 🎵 – Samantha Jade.
Ah, with Doctor Sleep and Pet Sematary (to name a few) coming out in recent years, I’ve loved catching up on the horrific mind of Stephen King without having to read so much. Firestarter is the next title synonymous with King’s bibliography, and I’m excited for the rudimentary literary lesson this movie shall bestow on me.
Charlie (Ryan Keira Armstrong) was just a baby when she first set her room on fire. Since then, her parents Andy (Zac Efron) and Vicky (Sydney Lemmon) have moved around a lot, trying to keep her powers a secret, and fearing a stealthy organization that experimented on them in college, which probably resulted in Charlie being born special, will find her and dissect her. Charlie attends public school, where bullies pick on her for being weird, and Charlie senses the fiery urges getting stronger, unable to quash them down as easily as before. Director Keith Thomas is here to let us know what happens when the selfish organization gets a whiff of Charlie’s location.
Well, I’m Krusty the Clown with a cigarette hanging out of my mouth because WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT?! I’d heard this movie was bad, and the critics ain’t fibbing! This screenplay, it’s execution, are terrible – what I mean is, the important stuff like ‘how you want a scene to end’ and ‘how you get there’, that takes believable dialogue and subtle placement of theme or motif to achieve an investing pay-off, are way off. Aside from a rather informative opening credits montage, the majority of Firestarter’s scenes are awkward and confusing to watch, and leave it up to me to decide what I think is happening. I found myself asking if Charlie’s parents are supposed to be good to Charlie – I wasn’t sure. Are they unhinged under the stress of these lurking scientists stalking their every move? Are they loving? Are they arrogant? Do they have Charlie’s best interests at heart? I don’t know! I just don’t know. Andy’s characterization is so murky for the longest time, considering we spend so much time with him, in the beginning. We know he means to protect Charlie, by not ‘pushing’ her powers away, but he’s also blunt with her when he’s frustrated – Charlie says she meant to injure her Dad instead of accidentally burning her mother at some point, and Andy, for some reason, brings up Charlie’s puberty twice. Like, ew, is that relevant? It doesn’t seem to be relevant since she’s had her powers since birth. If it’s not relevant, then it’s just creepy.
Eventually, it becomes clearer that Charlie’s relationship with her father is supposed to be the heart of the story. There are scenes when Andy is consoling his daughter that highlight why Zac Efron is a good pick for the role, because the guy is just too damn charismatic. I don’t mean to insult the other actors directly when I write this, but he does stand head and shoulders above the rest 😬 I’ve also watched Efron’s first movie of the year, Gold, and he’s grooving out a nice 2022, even if it’s only off his work alone. Now that we’ve seen him coax a daughter into flame, maybe we can see him ‘flame on’ himself as the next Human Torch, Marvel, please? Yeah, baby; make it happen!
From the trailer, I did assume that the father character would be the most sympathetic in containing his daughter’s ability, akin to Elizabeth Banks in Brightburn – another underwhelming superchild origin story. But it seems Firestarter offers more than that, as it’s about Charlie learning the differences between being good and evil, rather than embracing her power for selfish reasons, as I led myself to believe. I thought the movie might’ve focused in on Charlie, her personality, and her day-to-day development, but it turns out Firestarter is a typical on-the-run story with as much time devoted to her father’s quiet emotions as to hers. It only happens a few times, but at least the affect is cool, when Charlie releases her inner Moltres, or phoenix’s up – whatever you want to call it. I’d say the score is aiming to capitalize on a modern audience’s love of Stranger Things, but then I see that the John Carpenter is actually credited as composer, so maybe this movie is genuinely reviving the good old says – but all it does is remind me that there was a Firestarter movie in the ‘80s too, with Drew Barrymore, and maybe I should’ve watched that instead.
Like many a bad movie, there’s a story to be told in here somewhere, yet there’s not much redeemable about Firestarter, other than Efron, and the minor insight I gain into another of Stephen King’s tales. I got about halfway through the movie and then I was running out the clock. Firestarter, ya done! I wish I’d had one of those negative red buzzers they have on Britain’s Got Talent to rid you off the screen. Furthermore, from a technical point of view, this could be some of the ugliest camerawork I’ve ever seen, especially when Red from That ‘70s Show (actor Kurtwood Smith) briefly gets involved. Does anyone remember Push? That Dakota Fanning movie from the late 2000s. I liked that movie when it first came out but not many people did. All this talk of ‘pushing’ and shoving in this movie has made me want to seek out Push again. I haven’t thought about that movie in a decade… So maybe this Firestarter experience will have a happy ending.
1.0
Leave a Reply