by Austen Terry, Contributing Writer
There has been a resurgence of Stephen King properties either getting sequels to decades-old movies, or completely rebooting them in the past few years. Firestarter is the newest of King’s stories to get rebooted, and the question is, was it necessary or needed? Now I want to preface this review as the 1984 Firestarter is one I haven’t seen yet, even though I always meant to and will; I just haven’t gotten around to it. In recent years the story elements here have shown up in other sci-fi and horror concepts, so I know enough about the story. But this review will solely be about the 2022 outing. The trailers really sold me on wanting to check this one out, partly for the effects and partly for Zac Efron. There are a lot of things that just don’t work with this reboot that makes it hard to enjoy. There are still good bones here where you can see it could have worked, but they didn’t explore them enough.
Firestarter tells the story of Charlie McGee (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), who has the mysterious power of being able to set things on fire with her mind. Trying to keep her safe from the government (as always) are her father and mother, Andy (Efron) and Vicky McGee (Sydney Lemmon). As with every sci-fi/horror movie, there always are government types who are out looking for our protagonists; here, they are followed by Captain Hollister (Gloria Reuben) and pursued by Rainbird (Michael Greyeyes). The McGees were at some point part of a chemical drug trial to study their gifts which were passed down to Charlie. Not only does Charlie have Pyrokinesis — she also has telepathic powers as well, similar to her father’s.
To start off with some positives, Armstrong felt perfectly cast here. To me, she even looks like Drew Barrymore from the ‘84 version. Besides that, she did really well with her expressions to make the effects-heavy movie feel real. She makes you feel for her with what she is going through, while she realizes what having powers like this means. None of the problems with this movie comes from Armstrong. I think she did a fantastic job with what she was given. Armstrong and Efron work somewhat well together, but having him be the, “you should repress your powers” parent make it hard to like his character and to root for him. There seem to always be these two types of parents in sci-fi works — one who wants the child trained on how to use their powers and another who wants them to repress their powers. To set this movie in the modern day, it might have worked better to have both parents be on the same page.
That’s where the story starts to unravel for me: setting the story like this in modern times. The reason government human experimentation stories like this work is the Cold War fear from the ‘80s. With modern technology, there just doesn’t seem like a good reason to have human experimentation like this; it’s part of the story that still feels very ‘80s. Then they have to come up with multiple reasons for the family to not have electronics around the house, even though most schools today use iPads and the internet for tons of school assignments.
It also felt like there was no chemistry between Armstrong and Efron. With the type of parent Efron is playing, it leaves him distant from his daughter, even though he is trying to protect her and keep her safe. He could have helped her or trained her then have something else be the incident to the government finding them. Efron even feels distant from Lemmon as well. For people playing husband and wife of at least 11, years it felt like they just met each other and haven’t gone through the history they had. Realistically, it still feels awkward that Efron is at the point in his career he is playing a parent of a pre-teen.
This movie felt like it took the Firestarter story and tried to make it into three different movies. You have the running from the government story, the supernatural power developing story, and the little girl coming of age story. Sometimes having three story arcs like this works — look at Stranger Things or Logan. The problems with the story and direction of this movie fall on the writer Scott Teems and director Keith Thomas. Thomas doesn’t have many directing credits to his name and it’s almost the same with Teems whose last foray in horror (Halloween Kills) wasn’t one I enjoyed either. It just feels like they bit off more than they could chew and it shows.
Finally, one of the last things I did enjoy was the effects. There were several visual effects that almost save this movie. Seeing heat radiate off Charlie, or seeing the objects around her radiating heat while she is struggling to contain her powers is something special. Even the effects of her using her pyrokinetics are great, and I am really nit-picky about effects looking good.
So if you are looking forward to checking out this latest reboot of a Stephen King work, might I recommend just reading the book? If you still want to see it, then just watch it on Peacock over going to see it in a theater.
Score: 3/10
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