Review: Firestarter

Image courtesy of Universal Pictures.

Stephen King film adaptations tend to be a mixed bag. Some of the best - "The Shining" or "Stand By Me" - deviate from the original source material, whereas some of the others that work very well ("Carrie," for example), stay pretty true to it. The original 1984 version of "Firestarter" - which was based on King's 1980 novel - stayed fairly true to the novel, but this new version takes some liberties - while neither version is particularly great, the Drew Barrymore film had more going for it than this remake, if you can call it that, which is mostly just lacking in inspiration.

In the new film, young Charlie (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) is a girl with extraordinary powers - she can cause things to burst into flame by using her mind - or, more accurately, when she becomes upset and loses control. Her parents, Andy (Zac Efron) and Vicky (Sydney Lemmon), also have their own powers - Vicky can move objects with her mind, while Andy possesses some form of mind control, which he uses to make money by helping people quit smoking.

Charlie wonders why they do not possess cell phones or computers and seemingly keep off the grid in general. At school, she is occasionally bullied, and it's after an episode in a gym class when she loses control that she realizes why they live the way they do. Attention is drawn to the family and a woman named Captain Hollister (Gloria Reuben), who runs a shady facility for those with special powers known as The Shop, sends a taciturn Native American hitman named Rainbird (Michael Greyeyes) to try to capture the family. In the process, he kills Vicky, and Andy and Charlie go on the lam.

The film's story is fairly simplistic and much of it is either spent on the run or shacked up at the farmhouse of an older man (John Beasley) and his extremely ill wife before the showdown finale at the psychiatric institute takes place. The backstory of how Andy and Vicky took part in experiments that resulted in their powers is fairly nebulous, and there are a fair amount of holes in the story - for example, how Charlie managed not to kill her mother while she was pregnant with her when she clearly can't control her powers as an infant and nearly burnt up her crib as she slept in it.

Although not all Blumhouse films can rise to the level of "Get Out," the budgetary constraints are often made up for by using directors who use imagination to get around them. This latest, however, just seems somewhat cheap compared to the original - the effects are ho hum and the only real bit of inspiration is the '80s-sounding electronic score by the legendary John Carpenter.

There is at least one improvement here. Although George C. Scott was a phenomenal actor, his portraying the Rainbird character was, perhaps, ill advised, so the choice of Greyeyes - who gives a haunted and often ferocious performance - was a good one. 

"Firestarter" was written during a period in which King often focused on young people with extraordinary powers - such as Charlie, Danny in "The Shining" and Carrie White. While the 1980 novel mined that concept well, this film is mostly a cheap exploitation picture that doesn't have much to say on the matter. The film ends on a grim note as Charlie turns into a killing machine in a manner from which the original mostly shied away. "Firestarter" isn't the worst King adaptation - in fact, there are many that are significantly more dismal than this one - but it's among the least inspired.