Firestarter review

FIRESTARTER:

SECOND FILM VERSION OF STEPHEN KING NOVEL GOES UP IN FLAMES! 

By Nico Beland

Movie Review: * out of 4

UNIVERSAL PICTURES

Ryan Kiera Armstrong in Firestarter (2022)

 

            A young girl with pyrokinetic powers and her dad must outrun a shady organization out to catch them in Firestarter, the latest film adaptation of a Stephen King novel and the second Firestarter movie following the 1984 version. I’m not familiar with the original book, but I did watch the 1984 film prior to watching this one and it’s…average. 

            The original movie definitely isn’t one of the strongest Stephen King film adaptations and has a lot of pacing issues, but the performances by Drew Barrymore, David Keith, and George C. Scott carry the entire movie and it leads to an incredible final act, not to mention the music by Tangerine Dream is legendary. 

            Now we have this second adaptation of the story produced by Jason Blum (Get Out, Halloween (2018), The Invisible Man (2020)) and directed by Keith Thomas (The Vigil), which seemed like a good idea when it was announced because a remake could potentially improve upon the original and fix most of the flaws the first time around. Yeah, that’s not what we get here and if anything, this movie makes the original look like Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining by comparison. 

            This is a very dull slog of a movie devoid of just about everything that made the original somewhat watchable. It’s an example of a remake that should have been great but ultimately ends up going up in flames faster than the character herself. 

            The film follows Charlie (Ryan Kiera Armstrong-American Horror Story: Double Feature, The Tomorrow War), an eleven-year-old girl with an extraordinary gift…the power to create fire. She and her parents, Andy (Zac Efron-Neighbors 1 and 2, The Greatest Showman, Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile) and Vicky (Sydney Lemmon-Helstrom, Succession, Fear the Walking Dead) have been on the run for more than a decade from a shadowy federal agency that wants to harness Charlie’s powers and weaponize it. 

            Charlie’s powers are triggered by anger and pain and Andy has taught her how to control it, but as gets older, the flame gets harder and harder to defuse. To make matters worse, the organization deploys a mysterious hitman known as John Rainbird (Michael Greyeyes-Fear the Walking Dead, True Detective, Wild Indian) to hunt the family down and seize Charlie for good, but Charlie has other plans. 

            The film also stars Kurtwood Smith (Star Trek, RoboCop, The X-Files) as Dr. Joseph Wanless, John Beasley (The Sum of All Fears, Walking Tall, The Purge: Anarchy) as Irv Manders, and Gloria Reuben (ER, Lincoln, Cloak & Dagger) as Captain Jane Hollister. 

            Overall, the new version of Firestarter is another prime example of how not to do a remake and serves as another entry to the long list of Stephen King adaptation misfires. What should have been a film that improves and expands upon the ideas from the original ironically takes away a lot of what made it endearing and fascinating. 

            Say what you will about the original, but at least it took time to establish the characters, story, and ideas in a mostly effective way. This version feels like it’s on autopilot and tries to condense all the key moments from the original down minus the humanity and passion to the point where you just don’t care what’s happening onscreen. 

            I think what hurts this film the most is how underdeveloped the villains are this time around. While the villains in the original were the stock, shady laboratory scientists who want to get Charlie and her family, they at least had plenty of scenes to establish their reasoning behind it. 

             This one has like a scene or two where the head of the laboratory and the hitman talk about their plan, but that’s all we get. I’m also very disappointed there wasn’t much of a connection between Charlie and the hitman (who pretended to be a friendly janitor in the original and eventually betrays her), the hitman is sent to catch the girl, kills the mother, captures the dad while the girl runs into the forest, and at the end of the climax he takes her in his arms and carries her across the beach…then the credits roll (WTF!?!). 

            Even the climax, which was arguably the best scene in the original feels half-ass and lazy this time around. She goes in to rescue her kidnapped father, incinerates a bunch of scientists, and (Barely) burns the whole place down, significantly less exciting and epic than the original where she was pretty much a walking, talking, time bomb. 

            I will highlight some positives regarding this film, most of the acting is decent and the musical score is awesome, especially given the fact that John Carpenter composed some of it. Also, I appreciate how this version does try to give Charlie and the family more of a backstory before they get hunted down, whereas the original begins and they’re already on the run. 

            Sadly, those are the only positive things I have, this was not a fun watch at all and it’s easily the worst Stephen King film adaptation I’ve ever seen. Even the worst films based on his work have at least some entertainment values, but this isn’t like Maximum Overdrive or Dreamcatcher and instead falls more in the same breakfast club as The Dark Tower movie…but even that movie had more things I liked about it. 

            I would say stick with the original, but even the original wasn’t that great to begin with either so…just stick with Brian De Palma’s version of Carrie, a far superior Stephen King film adaptation about a girl with powers. Watch that and throw this version of Firestarter into the flame.