Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1139344
6 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 7 JULY 2019 FILM FILM PHYSICS teaches us that for every action there's an equal and opposite reaction, and so it should come as no surprise that the current corporate su- perhero blockbuster craze is beginning to yield its own shot of darkly-inflected pushback. And while it's hardly a trail- blazing affair, Brightburn arrives to cinemas with im- peccable timing, offering yet another morsel – though one with a decidedly bitter tang – to superhero fans, while also short-circuiting the 'franchise fatigue' that's afflicting some movie-goers by presenting a flipped-over take on the genre. Written by Brian and Mark Gunn (brother and cousin to Guardians of the Galaxy di- rector James Gunn, who co- produces here) and directed by David Yarovesky, Brigh- burn opens with a device that should be familiar to both fans and non-fans of the superhero genre the world over: a rural childless couple finding an al- ien bundle of joy crash-landing by their farm. Keen to conceive but biologi- cally unlucky, Tori (Elizabeth Banks) and Kyle Breyer (David Denman) decide to raise the extraterrestrial child (Jackson A. Dunn) as their own, nam- ing him Brandon and shield- ing him from his true origins. But once the boy turns twelve, the call of his biological roots becomes too strong to ignore, and Brandon begins to grow into the scourge of his little ru- ral town of Brightburn. Working off a script that edg- es towards the dangerous prec- ipice of workshopped efficien- cy, David Yarovesky directs a lean and mean subversion of the Superman origin story, whose saving grace is ultimate- ly not so much its high-con- cept central conceit as much as the delicious B-movie engine it secretly operates under. For the most part it's pretty much a 'what you see is what you get' kind of affair, with Brandon's reign of terror grad- ually escalating from ominous possibility to destructive inevi- tability, following the expected beats along the way and giving horror-hounds a decent meas- ure of imaginative kills to sali- vate over. Suspension of disbelief blink- ers are required throughout – could Tory and Kyle re- ally have passed off their alien son as a routine adoption for 12 whole years? – which only emphasises the project's pulpy nature. Which means that Bright- burn is in some ways more comic-booky than its current crop of slick cinematic coun- terparts: it festers like a fasci- nating alien wound away from the ballooning corporate silos of the Marvel and DC cinemat- ic universes. This is also down to the fact that on the superhe- ro-to-horror ratio, Yarovesky's film skews squarely towards the latter, in the end devel- oping closer affinities to the Omen franchise than anything dreamed of in Superman's phi- losophy. But neither is this to say that the film is entirely hollowed out on the thematic front. Be- cause it does lean into the hor- ror – a genre always-already ripe with symbolic and psy- chological weight – Brandon's arc can also be seen as an en- actment of growing pains, writ large. After all, adolescence is pain- ful and confusing enough. Mix in the revelation that you're ac- tually the spawn of a destruc- tive inter-galactic force that's calling to you to 'Take the world' and, well… Superman meets The Omen in this refreshingly dark take on the superhero franchises currently dominating cinemas worldwide BRIGHTBURN ETERNAL FLAME BURNS BRIGHT SPUTTERING OUT PISSED AWAY ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ The verdict Zoning in on a killer con- cept and executing it with a B-movie brio, the Gunns and Yarovesky have crafted a much-needed anti-super- hero tonic for our oversatu- rated times. Here's hoping that the hinted-at 'expand- ed universe' suggested in the closing credits doesn't lead to much the same in the near future. Teodor Reljic ★ ★ ★ B R I G H T B U R N ( 15 ) Bad Brandon Jackson A. Dunn gets a taste of blood Mummy dearest: Elizabeth Banks The perils of an alien adoption