Brightburn

Damian from Krypton terrorizes his adoptive Kents, crushes Lois Lane's hand just to be safe, and doesn't want to save our world but rather corrupt it. If there’s a heaven, there must be a hell. If there’s a Superman, there must be a Badman. Brightburn tries to deconstruct superheroism across genres, but it's paralyzed by three kryptonites. The Gunn cousins (a glance at their filmography says it all) and David Yarovesky, who, with a potentially attractive topic, managed in just 85 minutes to show a complete inability to engage the audience with anything (yes, torn jaws and glass in the eye may look striking in the tabloid version of the Daily Planet, but they don't help the stale remainder at all). Lex Luthor as a sincere philanthropist, slim-witted Otis, and Zod’s crew in blue-collar outfits saving planet Earth are tempting ideas, but hopefully, there won’t be any willingness for a more global sequel with this creative team. (11.07.2019)

Unfortunately, my fears that Yarovesky isn’t a good director have been confirmed. He was incapable of turning an attractive premise into something more than an average film. The plot arc is exactly what you can imagine when you say “the horror version of Superman”, and that’s all there is to it, Brightburn never deviates from the line you expect. Fortunately, the creators where able to deconstruct the classic structure of the super-hero origin story, but not able to surprise the horror fans. The director couldn’t create any bond with the positive characters that would really interest the viewer, and, as a result, the film never gave me the impression that the creators “want to tell the story of this family”. Throughout, the film just felt like “we want to play with the idea of an evil Superman, and we must have a human mum and a human dad”. But Brandon’s rampage starts relatively late, and only a couple of moments are truly memorable, and what can you do when you are uninvested in the human heroes? When you don’t believe they are viable characters? Brightburn is watchable thanks to its premise, which is cool, really. But what prevails in the end is the feeling of a wasted opportunity. It could’ve been great in many ways: taken more seriously or tragically or, on the contrary, totally bonkers. But this final form is pointless, and shouldn’t have been like that! (23.05.2019)

I feel like this movie didn't offer anything interesting at all. The only twist, a 180-degree reversal of the Superman story in the style of The Omen, is known to anyone who has seen the trailer, and I didn't see any others. I would write that a promising idea went unused, but it's questionable whether it could have been used at all with this approach. It's neither proper horror, nor psychological thriller, nor even entertaining in any way... It's simply not good. (01.03.2020)

In the feature film Justice League, the evil Superman was the best. Although he didn't get as much screen time as originally intended, he entertained me the most out of all his films. So, I had quite high expectations for this Brightburn-esque reinterpretation of the man in the red cape, which unfortunately dissipated after the banner of negative reviews. Indeed, I am partially disappointed, but on the other hand, I must appreciate the effort to try something a bit different, although after that flop in theaters likely one of the last. Another stroke of bad luck from my point of view is that I had started watching thematically similar the Boys before seeing this, where blood is also not spared, hence the brutality here did not affect me 100%, although I did look away here and there as the creators sometimes went too far. Unfortunately, there was no budget, and the cliffhanger will never be resolved, but I am glad at least for this one fresh idea. Thanks to producer James Gunn. 7/10 (11.08.2019)

The anticipated horror superman produced by James Gunn is a nice surprise for me and will not be missing from this year's top list. While most of my colleagues are rather disappointed, it worked perfectly for me as an evil superman origin story, and I didn't mind that it follows a familiar template. It has great pacing, decent actors, decent technical aspects, and once little superman goes on a rampage it offers this year’s two best gore scenes. The finale is nicely paced and I was really surprised at how brutal the film is in the end. I don’t think this year there’l be a more brutal and entertaining horror film, so thumbs up for me and I want to immediately see a sequel with a grown up evil superman! 80% (23.06.2019)