Firestarter (2022) Review

 

Firestarter is a science fiction horror movie based on Stephen King's 1980 novel of the same name, as well as a remake of the 1984 movie that also goes by the same name. The movie is produced by Blumhouse Productions, Weed Road Pictures, BoulderLight Pictures, and Angry Adam Productions and distributed by Universal Pictures. Firestarter is written by Scott Teems and directed by Keith Thomas.

The story is Charlene "Charlie" McGee seems like she's just your typical normal girl, but that's not really who she is. Carlene actually has pyrokinesis and a very powerful one at that. Because of this amazing ability she is hunted down by a secret government organization that want to capture and control her, now Charlie's father must do everything in his power to protect her no matter what.

Initial Reaction

My reason for wanting to see this was because I'm more than willing to give any sort of remake a fair chance. Especially since there are some good remakes. Such the remakes of Fright Night, The Woman in Black, The Fly, Dawn of the Dead, and we have good remakes that aren't horror films like Ocean's Eleven, The Departed, and True Grit.

Cons

One big issue with the film is it really needed to be longer. Cause there's so much story with the original book, that there's no way you could've possibly fit it all into a 90 minute runtime. Which is why I liked the IT movies so much. Instead of tiring to cram everything into a small amount of time, they broke the story apart. Which other than a longer runtime, should've happened with this. Or maybe they should've turned this into a miniseries. Either way, going down this way didn't work. What also sucked was the pacing. It started out fine enough, but once Charlie's cover was blown we go way too fast with the story. It's like the filmmakers didn't want to focus on the characters (which I'll get into soon enough) but instead wanted to do all of the fire burning and fugitive/on the run stuff instead. A internet critic by the name of Brad Jones (aka The Cinema Snob) said it best "Yeah it's paced differently than the other, but more like you're speed reading through the book". If you had to describe the remake's pacing in a nutshell, that really is the best way to go about it. Then we have our biggest problem and that's the characters. Really the only decent characters in the entire movie was Charlie's Mom and Dad. Other than everyone else was poorly written. The villains are best described as generic and/or bland. There really wasn't anything other than that to them. As for the other bad guy (John Rainbird), the story with him sucked. Especially the ending. There was no reason for Charlie to do what she did to him. Especially since he's the one who caused her the most pain in the entire movie. Speaking of Charlie, I don't know what the writer was going for with her. At one point we're suppose to sympathize with her and her struggles, then another point it almost felt like the filmmakers were setting her up to be the real villain of the story, then we're back to feeling sympathetic for her again.

Middle Ground

Really the only gray area is the performances. I didn't feel like anyone was truly bad, I just thought everyone was decent despite the really bad material.

Pros

The only thing to look forward to is the music. The score by John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter, and Daniel Davies was the only real highlight of the entire thing. If the movie was just the title and just the muisc I wouldn't have been disappointed. Sure that's basically something for a YouTube video, but it would've been better than what we got.

Firestarter is bad. I wanted to like it, but the quality of the movie was brought down by the story needing a longer runtime, bad pacing, and terribly written characters, especially on the villain's side. The performances were okay. Really the only good thing to come out of this was the score.

My final rating is Bad.

Well that was a let down. Anyways, come back on Monday, May 16th for my A Look Back at review of Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers. Until then, enjoy the rest of your day.