Faster than a search warrant, more powerful than Kavanaugh justice, able to delete species in a single bound … it’s Brandon! Brightburn asks the logical counter to the Man of Steel myth: what would happen if Superman were evil? … Or not so much evil as completely indifferent to human life, which amounts to the same thing when you’re as powerful as Superman. What if teenage Clark Kent woke up one day, found the glow stick in the barn, used it to communicate with his long-dead father and Jor-el said to the lad, “You know what, kid? F*** those guys. You’re better than they are. Take the planet.” How do you think that would have gone? Brightburn, more-or-less, imagines that very scenario.
The Breyers, Tori and Kyle (Elizabeth Banks and David Denman) desperately want a child. Like the Kents, the two are simple Kansas farmers. And like the Kents, they’re prayers are answered not by this world, but by another. A small spaceship lands in their backyard (we don’t find this out until act II) carrying a space infant the couple raises as its own.
Years later, Brandon Breyer (Jackson A. Dunn) is every bit the dorky tween he was raised to be. He’s super smart, which makes him a magnet for social abuse at school. He quickly learns to tool his forced introversion into
doodling. How doodling is depicted in the movies is not always consistent. Suffice to say, this version is not exactly the hilarity of Superbad. Later on, Brandon takes out his frustration on a power mower and finds (to his surprise) that he can fling the thing into the next county without thinking.
Then, uh oh, Tori and Kyle find Brandon’s porn stash, a selection of increasingly anatomical magazine clippings hidden under the kid’s bed (imagine going from Cosmo to a biology text). It is time for THE TALK … when every foster parent has to discuss with his alien child the proper details regarding depositing his egg sack into the chest cavity of an expendable life form. Actually, Kyle’s awkward parental advice one-on-one couldn’t have gone worse if that had been the actual subject. As a result, two things happen: 1) Brandon begins a stalking phase and 2) Brandon’s answers to uncomfortable lead-ins start becoming creepily terse and indifferent. When your parents tell you, for instance, that your uncle has disappeared, they’re really looking for something more than an impassive, “OK.”
You know how in sci-fi, children are always locked away and studied by the “evil” government? And as viewers, we’re always supposed to think the government has “gone too far” and root for the kid to escape? You know what I’m talkin’ about, right? Brightburn is the counter argument. Maybe this could all have turned out better if the Breyers had been honest about their adoption and the government had gotten involved. Maybe. Probably not. A kid as powerful as Superboy with some sort of natural lack of compassion was always going to have issues. Still, it’s a refreshing to get a counter argument from time-to-time.
Brightburn makes for decent horror; it’s like the germination of evil. Watching evil grow and blossom from something sweet and innocent into something creepy, malevolent, and domineering is something only a parent can truly appreciate. In a backhanded way, Brightburn also kinda makes people feel good about their own parenting; here are two people who care and seem to be doing the right things, and the kid still turns out wrong. Hey, if you raise the Devil, whatchagonnado? Evil boys will be evil boys.
There once was a boy of sup cred
Who filled every neighbor with dread
World domination
Is such aggravation
Why can’t you play legos instead?
Rated R, 90 Minutes
Director: David Yarovesky
Writers: Brian Gunn, Mark Gunn
Genre: Superboy! That is to say Amoral Superboy!
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Horror fans
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Parents
