Boy of Blood-Drawing Steel: "Brightburn" delivers what it promises as a bold superhero-horror blend


Brightburn (2019)
91 min.
Release Date: May 24, 2019 (Wide)

What if Superman was never a symbol for hope? What if his powers were used to do bad rather than good? While the film is never directly about Kal-El/Superman/Clark Kent, “Brightburn” certainly takes a similar mythos of the Superman archetype and subverts it with a what-if premise for a bold, mean genre blend of superhero origin story and bad-seed horror. If director David Yarovesky (2014’s “The Hive”) and screenwriters Brian Gunn (producer James Gunn’s brother) and Mark Gunn (Brian and James' cousin) sought to make the warped antithesis of what Superman has always stood for, they do succeed in that regard, satisfying those who are up for a film that doesn’t shy away from a pitch-black, dangerous vision.

Brightburn, Kansas couple Tori (Elizabeth Banks) and Kyle Breyer (David Denman) struggle to get pregnant, until one night when a tremor shakes their entire farmhouse and a baby literally falls from the sky. Years later, their “adopted” son Brandon (Jackson A. Dunn) is celebrating his twelfth birthday, but he begins being drawn to the trapdoor in his parents’ barn, where Tori and Kyle hid the space pod he crash-landed in. Once Brandon is called by a voice from the spacecraft in the night, the pre-teen does its evil bidding when his alien powers manifest. While Kyle’s best friend and brother-in-law Noah (Matt Jones) and Tori’s school-counselor sister Merilee (Meredith Hagner) chalk up Brandon’s angry, superior attitude and acting out at school to puberty, Brandon’s parents realize that their son’s origins might have something to do with their precious boy wanting to harm a hair on everyone’s head, including their chickens. 

Delivering on its bloody, R-rated promise, “Brightburn” should make even the toughest genre customers squirm when one of Brandon’s hapless victims pulls a shard of glass out of her eye and another loses his jaw. As Brandon’s diabolical plan escalates, there isn’t much more complexity to his transformation than a once-decent kid becoming pretty single-minded and relentless. Even so, as effectively played by Jackson A. Dunn, Brandon Breyer does become a creepy extraterrestrial slasher donning an unsettling hand-made cape attached to a red ski mask that could catch on as a Halloween costume this year. Elizabeth Banks injects warm humanity and a cool edge into the role of Tori, a loving mother who would do anything for her child, even if he displays signs of otherworldly psychopathy, and David Denman does fine work as well as Kyle, who’s comparatively quicker on the uptake in realizing that Brandon is not the sweet boy they thought they raised.

The narrative sometimes feels disjointed in its timeline before Brandon goes full Evil Superman, but as a testament to what makes the film work more than not is its simplicity and ballsy willingness to go as malevolent as it is allowed, particularly in a suspenseful set-piece set at a diner. Emblazoned with a nihilistic streak, “Brightburn” pretty deftly toes the line between being mean-spirited and just uncompromisingly nasty with zero hope in the end. By the end credits, which play Billie Eilish’s “bad guy” to eerie effect, the film opens up the possibilities for an entire franchise revolving around Brandon Breyer, and that might be the one shred of hope the film actually offers.

Grade: B -

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