j* Movie Reviews 2019

Brightburn (2019)

An excellently original take on both horror and super-powers.

It's no secret what this film is doing, it's a simple and effective premise. This is superman, and this time he's evil. It's also a super-relatable psychological horror for parents of any teenager going through a bit of a *growth* period. So in this film our parent couple adopted a baby that fell from space, ala Superman. As he hits puberty and finds his "calling," he gets his super powers, you know, super strength, flight and creepy hovering, general invincibility.

But he's a bit of a moody teen, and like fair call, who knows what alien puberty is like. So basically any little ounce of teen-rage he has is channelled through escalating physical and creepy conflicts. There is a nice progression from dissection porn under the bed through to some pretty full on gore. It is rated MA15 for reasons. Eye-popping, jaw dropping reasons.

It wasn't quite as deep-dark or scary as I was hoping, but it is still by far the scariest thing I've seen this year. There are quite a few really good jump scares, and different layers of body horror to gross out a range of people effectively. I really liked the way this played super-powers as parallel to demonic possession... it's kind of a connection that has been waiting to be made, and yet has been missing culturally. The hovering in this, no matter how super-alieny, is just as freaky as any number of demonic possession flicks. As is the pulsating, throbbing, glowing red force from the barn.

It's also really refreshing to see the super-damage really played up. In most superhero flicks we watch the big smashy battles and we're kind-of meant to ignore the chaos that is rarely fully shown, but that is clearly left behind... I mean oh great, Avengers saved the day again, but at what insurance cost? Because I'm feeling that in the Marvel universe they're running insurance calculations on number of Avengers rather than degrees of Climate Change. I digress. This film shows all sorts of buildings and humans well beat up from the super-powered kid.

There is an interesting take here too for those that like moral quandries. Because we're so often positioned to accept the super-power as good... whatever action they take we're mean to assume it's for the greater good of humanity. This is a rare case where we're positioned across from the power, without any other equivalent power to save "us." We are but helpless bystanders to it's unknowable forces. We have no solutions, except, you know, Kryptonite.

This is the other thing I thought was rad - it takes all the expected beats of a Superman film and gives them a nice dark twist. And it's fun to see that on the flip-side. Probably my favourite was the flying a loved one into the sky scene.

The kid who plays Brandon Breyer, Jackson A Dunn, is amazingly flexible. His face does so much and he's super-good at being super-bad, and just super-teeny too. Overall this has some weird deep feels, an excellent ending and some nice nods to Donnie Darko vibes.

J* gives it 4 stars.