Firestarter
For more than a decade, parents Andy and Vicky have been on the run, desperate to hide their daughter Charlie from a shadowy federal agency that wants to harness her unprecedented gift for creating fire into a weapon of mass destruction. Andy has taught Charlie how to defuse her power, which is triggered by anger or pain. But as Charlie turns 11, the fire becomes harder and harder to control. After an incident reveals the family's location, a mysterious operative is deployed to hunt down the family and seize Charlie once and for all. Charlie has other plans.
- Released: 2022-05-12
- Runtime: 94 minutes
- Genre: Fantasy, Thrillers
- Stars: Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Zac Efron, Sydney Lemmon, Kurtwood Smith, Michael Greyeyes, Gloria Reuben, John Beasley, Tina Jung, Hannan Younis, Gavin MacIver-Wright, Jeremy Ferdman, Jamillah Ross, Morrissa Nicole, Sheila Boyd, Darrin Maharaj, Danny Waugh, Lanette Ware, Hunter Smalley, Isaac Murray, Nicholas Vilord, Vas Saranga, Shane Marriott, Moses Nyarko, Claire Armstrong
- Director: Keith Thomas
Comments
- P3n-E-W1s3 - 12 January 2023
Abysmal - The Fire's Been Extinguished! 1-2-Miss.
Greetings, salutations, and welcome to my considerations and recommendation of Firestarter.
Story: 0.50/2 - Direction and Pace: 1.50/4 - Performances: 0.75/2 - Enjoyment: 0.50/2
Total 3.25/10
Oh my God! What is Blumhouse doing? When they started, the company had a good product because they had skilled writers, directors and actors. But since jumping on the easy bandwagon and rebooting stories and movies, everything started failing for them. Their Invisible Man was boring, overly long and missed the basic concept of the H G Wells novel. And Firestarter does the same.
Firstly, Scott Teems' screenplay is horrendous. His cuts and changes to the narrative make little sense, and destroys the principal and secondary characters; for example, Rainbird. In the original, he's as cold as a person can get. He befriends Charlie, only to witness the look of life leaving her body when he kills her. Teems' new and worsened Rainbird is just a hired gun. He possesses no depth or persona - which could be scary, had he employed it correctly. However, Teems isn't up to the challenge, so he purely makes him "there" because he's in the story. As for Andy McGee, he's as weak-willed as any millennial. You feel like slapping him and telling him to get a god-damned grip: The initial Andy would gladly sacrifice his life for Charlie - if there was no other way for them to survive and escape: He was driven and tough. Though the worst thing, by far, that Teems does is deliver the worst and most nonsensical ending of any movie I've watched - and I've watched plenty. This ridiculous finale is inevitable and easily foreseeable, especially after watching all the previous rubbish on screen. And it was the rotten cherry on top of the mouldy icing slavered on the cockroach-infested cake, for me. If I were Stephen King, I'd be distancing myself from this pile of stinky crap. This FireStarter is worse than the Kubrick Shining. In fact, it's the worst King adaptation to date.
The direction isn't much better, either. There are a lot of washed-out and overlong set-up sequences that lead to a poor and swiftly ended pyrotechnic special effect. Even the original movie did better on the special effects - and that was back in the 80s. The trouble is that Teem's screenplay is drab and doesn't give the director much with which to work. But the least Keith Thomas could've done was make it interesting for the viewer. But it's standard point-and-shoot stuff. There's not even an overabundance of spectacular aerial drone shots, that most movies rely on today. His pedestrian style merely adds to the picture's tedium. One thing that made me chortle, though, was the soundtrack. The director appears to pay homage to the 80s - when the original movie was made, with some Carpenter'esq synthesizer music. It amused me because the original film used classical music and a full orchestra, and also because it was a reverence to a better movie - how ironic. Thank you for the unintentional laugh, Mr Thomas.
But the cast is the worst. Apart from Ryan Armstrong, who portrayed Charlie, everyone else appears to have phoned in their part. They are as dull as the story and the direction. Efron, as he gets older, appears to be slowing down. He was so much better when starting out in the business and had to prove himself. The guy could act. But as Andy, he's as enthralling as drying paint and as believable as a rainbow-farting unicorn (yep, sorry to inform you, they ain't real).
Come on, guys and gals. If you're going to redo anything, make it better than the original or just bin the idea.
Guess what, folks? I recommend you stay away from this terrible little movie. I would wholeheartedly suggest picking up the novel - it's brilliant, or watching the 1985 movie, which is entertaining - more than can be said for this twaddle.
Please check out my The Final Frontier and Killer Thriller Chiller lists to see where I ranked the movie.
Take Care & Stay Well. - simon-cooke-514-622240 - 17 December 2022
Is Zac broke?
The book was good. The original by John Carpenter although dated is still a good film. This adaptation is a total shambles.
Acting is atrocious, special effects are cheap with no imagination and the story strays from the original material.
It looks like everyone involved was only available at the weekend, so it was filmed and edited in two days.
Why make a film and not stick to the source material?
Zac Efron must be short of money if he signed up to this rubbish.
The only plus factor was the music.
Jason Blum needs to stop hiring bums to direct films.
I'm baffled how it's scored this high. Stay well clear of this and search for the original.
