3/10
Great idea. Terrible execution. Brightburn wastes its opportunity to create an interesting twist on the superhero genre. From laughable performances to a mediocre plot, not much goes right aside for the initial concept.
While not overly original, I was still genuinely excited to see the idea of an evil “superman”.
Particularly because this was also going to be a gory horror film, which completely goes against the grain of current market trend. Too often we see beloved superheroes do great things like saving people.
What if they did the exact opposite? A movie about a superhero that turns into a villain but has no one that can stop them. That’s what made Brightburn attractive to me.
Unfortunately, that’s as good as it gets because the film feels incredibly long and ultimately is very underwhelming.
While I’m willing to forgive the 30-minute build up in the beginning, I cannot understand why the rest of the film still progresses slowly. Tensions would rise here and there but overall, there are too many gaps of uninteresting conversations or weirdly placed scenes. Most of these are filled with unintentionally laughable lines of dialogue and cringey performances. The actor who played the father was a notable source of ridiculousness, but in a so bad it’s good kind of way.
The worst part is that when the great stuff does come, the parts where we’ve come to see “superman” killing people, it was just so underwhelming. There were only two gory parts that occurred but even these felt neutered by the executives at Sony.
This is going to sound psychotic, but I came here to see an evil “superman” that tore up cunts. I wanted to see him ripping people’s limbs off, some stomach guts ripped out, or other bizarre and confronting deaths from brutal mutilations. Not less than one second shots of him breaking people’s bones.
Use his powers to come up with creative ways to kill off people. Even if the plot is boring and filled with uninteresting characters, had Brightburn was worked like the Evil Dead remake where abhorrent gory deaths occurred, it would have at least been fun.
Although I left feeling dissatisfied with Brightburn, I’m still glad to see Hollywood taking steps to try interesting and original concepts. So, while these films might not be the shiny examples that show taking risks can actually pay off, the fact that they’re willing to take a risk is ultimately a good sign.
I genuinely hope they do a sequel that can improve on the original but also why just limit it to having an evil “superman” type character? Show us more different takes on other superheroes. Maybe ones we’ve never even seen before. Doesn’t have to be a horror film either. Maybe a romantic comedy with Wonder Woman? Actually, maybe not.
Skip it.