For every parent in the world who sees Brightburn, prepare to struggle due to what the morality play presents you in the terrifying flick from the minds of the family Gunn. Yup, this film—which could also sit in the alien invader subgenre—was written by Guardians of the Galaxy mastermind James Gunn’s cousin Mark Gunn and James’ brother Brian Gunn. The writer-director of the tale that cinematically introduced us to Star Lord and his band of merry warriors, serves here as a producer for this wickedly original flick.
Tori and Kyle Breyer (Elizabeth Banks and The Office’s David Denman star as the married couple) run an enormous farm in the Midwest somewhere. One fateful evening, their long gestating desire to having a child is realized when he literally falls out of the sky in a spaceship. They raise Brandon (Jackson A. Dunn) as their own, living the American dream.
When the boy reaches puberty, things get weird. As teased in the Brightburn trailer, Brandon is capable of some serious horrors. For anyone hoping for a Superman-type result to his tale, yeah … not going to happen. He discovers that he has powers and does not makes it his life mission to make Earth a better place. Instead, the Breyer’s come face-to-face with the bloody reality that their son is more youthfully psychotic General Zod than the Man of Steel.
Before he dazzled us in the Marvel universe, James Gunn was quite the uncanny creator on the horror/suspense landscape (Slither, Dawn of the Dead). It is always welcomed when J-Gunn returns to that milieu that made him famous, like he did recently as writer and producer of 2016’s The Belko Experiment. His cinematic sensibilities are all over Brightburn, what with his penchant for having all characters—regardless of their place on the marquee—being firmly in the mix for whom has the best chance to perish at almost any time. That is one of the things I adore most about Gunn’s work beyond the superhero realm. Gunn’s films are rarely predictable. In fact, he keeps you guessing until you give up guessing!
Brian and Mark’s screenplay has us looking at a few elements of our world in a different light, thanks to their wicked wordplay. The idea of the Superman origins story clearly comes into play here, but what is most compelling and chilling, as told in Brightburn, is the millennia-old quandary that must have faced many a-parent when they learn that their child is extolling evil. While their beloved Brandon starts to behaviorally go off the rails and people perish, the pained world that Tori and Kyle now inhabit will have millions of parents taking stock of their own thoughts on the price paid by parents stemming from the sins of the child.
Brightburn also had me taking that Superman origins tale a bit further back in history. In a sense, Superman’s and Brandon’s journey is truthfully the iconic Moses parable. Baby’s parents can’t raise the child (for whatever reason). They put him in a vessel of some sort (a basket for Mr. 10 Commandments and a spaceship for Brandon). One would go on to free the Jewish people after ions of bondage and the other would unleash utter hell on the city of Brightburn (i.e. where the flick got its name!) and we suspect soon … the rest of the world.
Banks is terrific and gives herself over to the story in a such a way that she is everyone’s mother. It’s a priceless turn that contributes heavily to the effectiveness of the emotive pull of Brightburn and how it does not just scare and then lets you recover. It lingers. Denman’s performance, hopefully, will let the casting directors of the world know that The Office veteran can do more than comedy as he excels here as the father who awkwardly has to deliver “the sex talk” in one act of the film while considering squashing his son’s lifeforce due to what he has done in the third act.
Dunn is divine. He delivers a performance that is sublime through the first half of the film and then, almost on a dime, he finds his purpose on this world and for all of us who inhabit such a place, that is not a good thing in the slightest. He is powerful and possesses a passion for killing that mirrors a cat toying with a mouse until it gets bored and then simply kills it. There is one scene involving Brandon and a hoovering automobile that is tantalizingly terrifying.
Brightburn is a fun and enjoyable ride, even if there is a tad too much time given to the audience to catch our collective breath between scares. The best horror and thriller movies grab you by the lapels and don’t let you go until the credits roll (and the greatest ones still stick with you long after that!). It’s not that Brightburn is not compelling, it is immensely. The issue is with its pacing and how it is slightly uneven. There are ebbs and flows to the entity that is the horror motion picture. Because the film’s helmer is relatively new to that role in the filmmaking process, he will learn with successive efforts to tighten up the storytelling machine.
That being said, director David Yarovesky (The Hive) has picked up much from James Gunn over the years as the two join forces creatively on many occasions. That awesome David Hasselhoff video short, Guardians of the Galaxy: Inferno, was helmed by Yarovesky and so too was the video game to accompany The Belko Experiment, Belko VR: An Escape Room Experiment. After witnessing his full length film work with Brightburn, yes the James Gunn inspiration stamp is all over this horrific tale, but it is also firmly revealed that Yarovesky has a firm voice all his own. I’m hoping that the Gunns and Yarovesky will join forces once again, sooner than later.
Grade: B