Stephen King has written over 60 novels. He is astonishingly prolific, with a career that spans half a century, so it is inevitable that some of his stories are better than others. Everyone loves Misery and The Shining, but no one wants to remember the disastrous Dark Tower adaptation or Maximum Overdrive. Firestarter is the latest King adaptation (a remake at that), and it definitely qualifies as one of the worst entries, or maybe the least inspired. A lot has changed in pop culture since the novel was first published in the early 1980s. Thanks to the ubiquity of superhero movies, there is zero novelty to King’s premise, as there have been multiple horror-adjacent superhero films released this year. Director Keith Thomas does little to distinguish his film, except for some minor technical flourishes, so the film’s overall tedium lasts its entire runtime.
If you have not read the original novel or seen the 1982 film, it won’t take long to bring you up to speed. Andy (Zac Efron) and his wife, Vicky (Sydney Lemmon), developed superpowers from government testing, and now live in hiding with their daughter, Charlie (Ryan Kiera Armstrong). While Andy can influence minds and Vicky can move objects with hers, Charlie’s powers are far more destructive. She can shoot flames from her body, and because she’s a young girl, she does not quite have the power to control them. An explosion-related accident at school catches the attention of shadowy government figures, so the family goes on the run to elude capture. And since Charlie is a literal walking time bomb, staying off the grid is much harder than it sounds.
Maybe King was influenced by the “X-Men” comic books, since his novel is a slightly scarier version of the mutants that populate that beloved series. At one point, a government agent refers to Charlie as a “real-life superhero,” as if we did not already get the connection. Nothing about her situation is alarming because the beats are dreadfully familiar. There is the predictable situation where Charlie gets angry and uses her power, only to immediately regret it afterward. In a moment of great peril, of course she figures out how to concentrate, and goes on a horrifying flame-based murder spree. Two things distinguish this film from countless superhero adaptations: Thomas depicts burn victims with more gore than you might expect, and the synth-heavy score – co-written by John Carpenter – is moody and atmospheric. Take those moments away, and all that’s left are creaky performances or foregone conclusions.
When a movie is this mediocre, the mind floods with desperate thoughts. Who is this for? Who thought it could have possibly been a good idea? It is certainly not Thomas and screenwriter Scott Teems, who handle the material as if they are embarrassed by it. The actors can only do so much with that they’re given, and while Efron’s adult career has an interesting trajectory, he is miscast as a father who single-mindedly protects his child. Acting veterans like Kurtwood Smith and Michael Greyeyes attempt some pathos, although their herculean effort has the unintended effect of making everything else seem amateurish by comparison. Modern horror is a big tent, a genre where a cast/crew of unknowns can make something scary and entertaining on a modest budget, or our greatest filmmakers can “slum it” with fare that draws a reliable audience. Firestarter is an unfortunate consequence of that big tent: a cynical attempt to attach a subpar literary footnote to popular genre trends.
Photo courtesy of Universal Pictures
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