Brightburn review – A darkly entertaining jaunt

Brightburn is a variation on the Superman theme about a child from another world crash-landing on Earth and being adopted by humans.

The major difference here is that this 12-year-old is a bad, bad boy who does not want to become a hero. His motives are far more sinister.

Director David Yarovesky, of The Hive fame, has mixed a fascinating cocktail of sci-fi and horror with a dose of mystery. It is graphic and gory and there are wide gaps in the narrative but on the whole, it’s a darkly entertaining jaunt into the spheres of weirdness.

Jackson A. Dunn plays Brandon Breyer, the little boy in question.

Elizabeth Banks in Brightburn. Photo: Sony Pictures

A spaceship with a baby inside lands on a remote Kansas farm in the town of Brightburn where a wife named Tori (Elizabeth Banks) and her bearded farmer husband Kyle (David Denman) are yearning for a baby.

This is a miracle from heaven, they believe, and they adopt the baby, no questions asked. They hide the spaceship conveniently in their cellar and they carry on regardless.

But as the boy grows older, he becomes a distinct oddity at school, exhibiting extraordinary powers, and one soon realises he is not from this planet. As usual his devoted parents, especially Tori, just put it all down to a bout of puberty.

The connection between Brandon, the spaceship (which somehow glows red at times) and his home planet is never clearly developed by screenwriters.

No one really cares until Brandon breaks the hand of a girl in his class, and later a few citizens meet gruesome endings. The local sheriff (Gregory Alan Williams) follows the clues, but is none the wiser.

Jackson A. Dunn in Brightburn. Photo: Sony Pictures

Dunn, an unfamiliar name to me, makes a scary enough Brandon whose looks quite literary kill and Banks plays the befuddled mother who still loves her son – come what may(hem).

Cheap thrills punctuate the production, but it sticks rigidly to a set formula and climaxes with a nicely twisted ending.

Info

Rating: ★★★☆☆
Cast: Elizabeth Banks, Jackson A. Dunn, David Denman
Director: David Yarovesky
Classification: 16 HLV

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