Brightburn
This film’s fantastic and intriguing premise is utterly wasted on two-dimensional characters, an entirely predictable plot, cheap jump scares and needless gore.
Premise: When a spaceship carrying a baby lands in the Kansas farm of childless couple Tori and Kyle Breyer (Elizabeth Banks and David Denman), they adopt the human-looking infant. But twelve years later the child, Brandon (Jackson A. Dunn), begins to display superhuman powers … and sociopathic tendencies.
Review:
The premise of Brightburn (named after the Kansas town where the story takes place) is gripping – what if a Superman-like alien had come to Earth as a baby and been adopted by kindly farmers, but eventually turned evil? If absolute power corrupts absolutely, how would a teenager who discovers he has the powers of a god keep his ego in check?
Many other films and stories have examined the idea that a super-powered being would struggle to hold onto their humanity in the face of such temptation. For example, although Doctor Manhattan in Watchmen never turned evil, as he became more and more powerful he did struggle to relate to humanity anymore, viewing humans and their petty wars with the same detachment that we may watch a hive of insects. Superman: Red Son looked at what might have happened if Superman’s spaceship had landed in Stalin’s soviet Russia instead of Kansas, and showed him becoming a totalitarian dictator. TV series The Boys has the Homelander character, who’s effectively an unstable version of Superman driven crazy by an abusive childhood. Even Paul Verhoeven’s Hollow Man showed that Kevin Bacon’s character slowly succumbed to his baser instincts once he became invisible and no longer had to worry about the consequences of his actions.
“…has all the subtlety of a super-punch to the face…”
In comparison, Brightburn has all the subtlety of a super-punch to the face. In what I assume is intended to be a clumsy metaphor for puberty, as soon as Brandon turns 12 years old he undergoes a radical and unexplained personality shift, turning from a normal, well-adjusted child to a murderous sociopath overnight. Brandon gets less character development than Damien-the-devil-child in The Omen films – he’s simply “evil”, and that’s all there is to it. There’s no examination of nature-versus-nurture – instead a switch is flicked and he’s instantly evil. This was a real missed opportunity, as the film even mentions how in nature certain species trick other species into caring for their young (such as cuckoo wasps), and there could have been an interesting examination of how being raised in a loving household causes Brandon conflict with his apparent “biological imperative” to take over the world. (Speaking of which, if his alien heritage is driving him to “take the world”, why is he just focusing on petty and juvenile acts of spite?)
But no, Brandon shows no sign of having any real inner conflict between his human upbringing and his alien heritage. Worse still, there’s not even any sign that Brandon is gradually giving in to temptation and allowing himself to become seduced by his own power and desires – in fact, there’s never any real explanation given for why he’s doing any of the things he does. At times, the film appears to suggest that he has genuine sociopathic tendencies (such as an obsession with human anatomy, and dabbling in animal mutilation), but this is all lost in a mess of superhero fixation (he’s doodling costumes and symbols from the start, and inexplicably dons a homemade costume almost immediately) and alien biological imperatives. In the end, the conclusion is … he’s just “evil”.
“…none of the characters have any depth…”
I don’t blame Jackson A. Dunn for any of this – he seems like a perfectly fine actor, but there is literally no “character” to Brandon, and he has nothing at all to work with. Elizabeth Banks and David Denman do what they can in their roles as Brandon’s parents, but they’re both one-note characters – Banks can’t bring herself to think the worst of her “baby boy”, and Denman seems to switch from loving father to “I never trusted that alien parasite in the first place” in the blink of any eye. None of the characters have any depth, and I feel the blame for that might lie with the writers Brian and Mark Gunn.
But that said, David Yarovesky’s workmanlike and uninspired direction doesn’t help, as it fails to breathe any extra life into the material or deliver any memorable moments. If anything, the direction just makes the film feel cheap and poorly made (especially when compared to other low-budget films, like Blumhouse’s output), and it feels like an over-reliance on using the same jump-scare countless times in the same movie is the result of a complete lack of creativity and originality.
“…the end result is a crushing disappointment…”
The final nail in the coffin is the “plot”, and I use that term as loosely as possible to describe the events of this film. Given that there is zero character development for Brandon, the plot basically just consists of him being “activated” once he learns of his alien origins, and then randomly killing people in increasingly violent ways. But even the kills themselves are bereft of any suspense or drama, and the (relatively large amounts of) gore just feels like a crutch trying to make up for the film’s other deficiencies.
All in all, there really is little to recommend in this film, and the fact that the premise held so many intriguing possibilities just makes the end result that much more of a crushing disappointment. This is one of those projects where you think no one could mess up such a great premise, but somehow they found a way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
If you want to see a film about what happens when a reclusive teenage outsider develops superpowers, and despite starting off with the best of intentions eventually finds himself seduced by his own powers, I’d highly recommend instead watching 2012’s Chronicle, starring Michael B. Jordan, Dane DeHaan and Alex Russell – it’s a little rough around the edges, but it’s infinitely superior to Brightburn.
