THE FOLLOWING REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS OF THE DISCUSSED FILM. READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
It’s good to embrace what makes you different, but the timing has to be right is all.
PLOT
Brightburn follows Tori and Kyle Breyer who raised an extraterrestrial they named Brandon in the titular fictional city of Kansas. Now at the age of 12, the boy would develop extraordinary abilities that include: super strength, super speed, invulnerability and heat vision. As his abilities unlock, he starts sleepwalking and begins a connection to the spaceship he crash landed on (hidden by his foster parents). As days go by, he would go from sweet to aggressive. Neither of his parents think too much of it until he is caught attacking one of their farm chicken and chews on a fork without getting injured (aware that he’s never been injured at all in his lifetime nor bled). At school, he is academically exceptional but is bullied for being socially awkward. The only other child to show kindness towards him is a girl named Caitlyn Connor (Emmie Hunter). Brandon would have a crush on her over this and would use his speed to stalk her, in the middle of a camping trip at night with his parents. When she catches him at the same night, she tells everyone he’s a pervert during PE class the next day. He would retaliate by crushing her hand, which gets him suspended. Since he used his speed to return to camp, Tori & Kyle defend him against Caitlyn’s accusation. On a rainy night, Brandon would actually see the ship for the first time and would speak his alien language. When Tori sees him in a trance, she wakes him up and suffers his first scratch upon landing near the ship. It is at this point where she admits what he is, explaining that she and Kyle adopted him when they were unable to conceive a child of their own. Angered of never being told the truth until now, he cracks the ship’s message to ‘take the world’. His official first step starts when choosing to kill Caitlyn’s mother Erika (Becky Wahlstrom) after she expressed displeasure towards him for his past actions. With the first human life he takes at the diner she worked at, her body goes missing which leaves Sheriff Deever (Gregory Alan Williams) to investigate. The first clue he finds is a logo of initials Brandon left behind. During counseling, the boy makes the mistake of expressing his evil intensions to his counselor, his aunt Merilee (Meredith Hagner). At night, he presses on to her at her home to not inform the police of her report on him. This only worsens his image and when Merilee’s husband Noah (Matt Jones) takes him home, he continues his terrible path by killing his maternal uncle. When his body is found the next morning, Tori & Kyle share the news to their son only to see him be emotionless about it. When Kyle presses on if he’s responsible since Merilee addressed his visit, Brandon reveals his strength to his parents. Sure that his son is responsible, Kyle finds his shirt covered in Noah’s blood and shows it to Tori. He is sure something has to be done to stop him, but his wife is against turning on the only child she’ll ever have. With the Breyer family going through a crisis, Sheriff Deever would recognize the same initials at the diner left behind at Noah’s accident. Desperate to prevent further casualties, Kyle takes Brandon out on a hunting trip, giving him an excuse to try and kill him. It fails when he shoots at him with his hunting rifle. The young Breyer would return the favor shooting heat vision through his father’s face. It is during this time where Deever confronts Tori of the initials he’s seen. She denies the resemblance and doesn’t let him look around the house, but when she does it herself, she finds a notebook containing only the initials but also drawings of the past murders. Just upon this revelation, Brandon would return home to attack Tori. When he chooses to alert her of his intentions, she calls 911 but Deever and Deputy Aryes (Annie Humphrey) are quickly killed before backup can arrive. Tori would then head to the barn for the ship, knowing that it’s hull the only thing that can wound him. When she heads there, she would find Erika’s eviscerated body. Before she could make a necessary sacrifice, Brandon would stop her as well and send her in the air, letting her fall to her death. He would then cause an airplane to crash and by morning, the evidence of him being responsible would be destroyed minus the initials he chose to paint on the crashed plane. The film would end with Brandon continuing his path of destruction by causing numerous disasters around the world under the alias of his hometown.
THOUGHTS
Considering that the superhero genre was blowing up in the 2010s, especially from Marvel Studios’ catalog, it made sense to get something different and this was just that. Like DC’s Watchmen, Producer James Gunn, Director David Yarovesky and the writing duo of Brian & Mark Gunn demonstrate a real life scenario if super-powered people did exist. From there, it gets as violent as you’d expect. From the get go, it wants you to feel disturbed and it succeeds in having us feel that because we’re seeing a character doomed to have a downfall. At first, Jackson A Dunn has us feel for Brandon because we know how innocent he is in his predicament. That innocence disappears when he chooses to let his emotions get the best of him. The anger he would feel over not being told the truth immediately is where he becomes so confused on what he really wants until leaning forward his original path to be a weapon of mass destruction. Because of him going through puberty within this period, it only worsened his conscience and it results in him ignoring whatever good intentions he had prior. Our fear of him is visible when he chooses to feel no remorse after his gruesome acts. It’s easy to identify Erika’s death was the worst one to witness because you don’t want to imagine someone pulling shattered glass from their eye before being finished off offscreen. To me however, it’s Noah’s demise that got to me the worst because it was deeply terrifying to see someone choke on their blood when trying to hold a broken jaw together. One by one, you come to realize he was never going to overcome these deep thoughts and you can only pray for hope for this world to figure out how to overcome such a threat before it’s too late. Of course, Brandon’s evil was truly sparked once the truth was unveiled by two people who wanted what was best for him and themselves. Elizabeth Banks and David Denman honestly made a great pair out of Tori & Kyle respectively. They make it clear the love is there between the two but their feelings over Brandon have grown to be mixed. Kyle never ignored where Brandon came from because he accepted he would be different by the Tim he’d get older. He chose to roll along with adopting him because Tori deeply wanted to be a parent more than anything and wanted her to be happy. By the time he acted out, he knew something had to be done and had he knew what his wife knew, the world would be in a much safer predicament. Tori makes it clear she is the opposite to Kyle because she chose to ignore where Brandon came from, wanting to appreciate what she saw as her only opportunity to be a mother. She kept choosing to deny what he was capable of because she deeply believed raising him right would prevent him from the path bound to be dark. I personally believe Brandon would’ve been more hesitant with his actions had she told him the truth sooner. Even if nothing was gonna change what he would do, at least there would be some kind of chance for him to have morals on his own. It wasn’t too big of a surprise for Kyle to die since he didn’t know how to stop his son, but it didn’t mean how disturbed I felt seeing his face be destroyed by heat vision. It was definitely Tori’s death that gave me a big frown because it became a deep allegory that parental love doesn’t always save children from darkness. Last but not least, the biggest treat of this movie has to be Michael Rooker’s cameo as The Big T to criticize the other supernatural figures out there. While I praise him for being a parody of the Marvel character J Jonah Jameson, I was having a big smile once I saw a picture of the Crimson Bolt from Super, making the fellow superhero film canon. I’m not gonna be asking for both films to officially crossover but I wouldn’t mind it happening in a distant future. All the confusion he is feeling There is no doubt when I say I find this film generally impressive, but there were still a bunch of things that held it back from being better. I was really hoping for no continuity errors, but I’m proven wrong as I annoyingly spotted Kyle go from having one to two candies between takes. We don’t see him pull out two from the pocket but only one and it’s weird as hell. If that wasn’t annoying, then I would top it off with Merilee texting Noah what looked like the first time. If that’s your husband, it should’ve been filled with messages from both to each other. But the icing on the cake of continuity errors here has to be how there is a hand double for Brandon when he is on the phone by the climax. That right hand belonged to grown ass man and you cannot tell me an average young child would have one like unless you were Robin Williams from Jack. It’s easy to become in awe of Brandon’s strength when he throws the lawn mower, but I refuse that thing was still working after throwing it so high. I know we need a scene to show how invulnerable he is but the fork scene was enough to seal the deal. I know Tori was hesitant to tell Brandon the truth of what he is, but she should not play dumb when Kyle addressed the chicken being attacked. There is no need to doubt that your alien son you adopted would be capable of the unordinary. And yeah the violence has to start at some point by the time Brandon crushed Caitlyn’s arm, but did the PE teacher have to threaten failing the latter if she didn’t help up the former? I mean I don’t know if that’s abuse of power or overreacting but it’s overall a weird way to begin showing how dangerous Brandon would be. I’m then wondering how the rest of the session went between him and Merilee because it cuts away after she reveals she has to report her report on him to the police. I would’ve felt more terror if we see him act frozen for the rest of the session but I guess it would’ve been a drag of a scene. I don’t even blame Noah to continue driving after Brandon reveals his powers, but he probably would’ve saved himself some time if he called Kyle or Tori or even 911 what was going on. I get that it’d be hard for people to explain the origin of a car wreck without actually seeing it, but I would not say animals were responsible if I saw a car on it back because it’s the most inconsistent thing to hear. And I don’t blame the writers for wanting to give Tori time to defend herself during the climax, but I do not believe Tori went from the bed to the window at Brandon’s speed. She is probably an athletic person, but she ain’t alien. Other than that, this is very dope of a film. In short, Brightburn is an underrated sci fi thriller for reminding audiences that some things are better left to be imagined. If you want to see a what if scenario for super powered people being a reality, check this out.
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