A Brightburn review

Thrillers are a guilty pleasure of mine. Whenever I suggest a thriller to watch people tend to mistake it as a horror film when they are in actuality quite different. Nevertheless, by the middle of the movie, all my friends were unintentionally entranced by the film and the level of suspense it invoked within your being. 

Before I start my review, I acknowledge that this is a B movie. It was never meant to be the next Avengers or Justice League, nor could the budget even be anywhere close. The aim of this movie is not to be the next big thing to kick start a series, but merely to entertain and to appreciate the ruminations and efforts of the director, the special effects team, the acting crew and all those that had a part to play with the production of this movie.

Brightburn talks about a small boy who crashlands from space right outside the barn of a couple who has always wanted a baby. Sound familiar? This character is meant to play the anti-superman. The couple, who embraced the child as a "blessing from the universe", raised the boy to the age of 12 and it is only here that our movie starts to take shape. Days before his 12th birthday, the boy starts to change; puberty for aliens if you will. He starts to develop powers similar to Superman and hears strange noises from the basement barn that put him into a trance, which turns out to be emanating from the spaceship he crashed from 12 years ago. Towards the end of the movie, the boy, realising that he possesses these powers, starts treating everyone around him as inferior, and kills them as he wishes, thus taking on a sinister persona.

This movie has a lot to be desired. For one, there has been no explanation of what the voices he hears from the spaceship are nor does he question it. There is also no psychological challenge by which he turns from the shy boy he was to the mass killer he becomes by the end of the movie. Towards the end of the movie, he claims that "I want to be good", right before killing off another character. There were also many red flags that should have told the parents that they should have stepped in and guided the child towards good instead of denying that he has nothing to do with the incidents that happened around town in the first place. Lastly, there is was no indication of his motivations. Why did he have the need to kill anyone he did not like? We will never know.

However, there are a lot of things that I did enjoy with the movie. Despite the low budget, there was nothing that I felt in the special effects were particularly "cheap", and the acting was definitely top-notch when compared to the usual actors we expect out of B movies. The build-up of tension was well done, and the movie had a very good grasp of when you were at the edge of your seat and exploited jumpscares very well.

In my opinion, this movie is a perfect 3/5: Enjoyable to watch but perfectly forgettable.

Thanks and regards,
Matthew Tan