Firestarter (2022)
SHOULD I SEE IT?
YES
Those who hold the original Firestarter in nostalgic glory will be curious to see how a modernized version of the film plays out.
Ryan Kiera Armstrong, the child lead in the film, is someone who shows potential to break out into a bigger star someday.
For those with enough interest, director Keith Thomas corrects the insensitive cultural appropriation from the 1984 original, with the casting of Michael Greyeyes as Rainbird.
NO
This is an inert, boring, and woeful adaptation of a mediocre Stephen King novel and film adaptation from the 1980s.
The visual effects look lousy and the adult performances are largely wooden and come off as disinterested.
As we have seen up to this point, when a film debuts in theaters AND on Peacock, that’s definitely a tell.
OUR REVIEW
As can often happen with movies from the past, revisionist history has placed Firestarter, the 1984 horror film starring a then-9-year-old Drew Barrymore, as something of a niche 1980s classic. The horror film, which is steeped in the politics and paranoia of the time, has a government agency attempting to steal a young girl who creates fire when her emotions get the best of her.
Adapted from a Stephen King novel, Firestarter, circa 1984, is rather boring. And while there are accomplished actors of the era prominently featured, this is also the movie where Oscar-winner George C. Scott plays a Native American villain named Rainbird, who sets out to assassinate the young girl, Charlie, and take her fire-generating abilities as his own.
Roger Ebert wrote that “the most astonishing thing in the movie, however, is how boring it is.” Well, I can only imagine what he would write about the 2022 remake. While it does allow the talented Indigenous actor Michael Greyeyes to play Rainbird and “take the role back” as Greyeyes recently told Indiewire, Firestarter (2022) is listless, inert, and completely lackluster. There’s not a single thing worth remembering here except, perhaps, the visual of young actor Ryan Kiera Armstrong clenching her eyes shut and creating balls of fire at and around villains who swirl around her and her family.
The most notable actor in this simultaneous theatrical/straight-to-Peacock release is probably Zac Efron, here as a suffused, downtrodden father to Charlie. He plays Andy, who along with wife Vicky (Sydney Lemmon), have telepathic abilities from being experimented on in their youth. A shady government agency known as “The Shop” are tracking Charlie, through their connection to Andy and Vicky, and seek to possess the young girl and weaponize her abilities.
There’s plenty of grist for the mill in Firestarter, but both 1984 director Mark L. Lester and 2022 director Keith Thomas fail to find any way to make this compelling. At least Lester had 1980s exaggeration and excess to toss into his film. Thomas doubles down on mediocrity and crafts a weak-kneed, listless story that fails to understand that a kid generating fire and wrestling with adolescent emotions is great fodder for a suspenseful horror film.
Obviously, King understood that. And yet, Thomas has delivered one of the most empty and underwhelming movies of the year. At times, the acting, mostly from adults, not named Efron or Greyeyes, rises to the level of a TV movie (which Firestarter kind of is, to be honest). The CGI goes from passable to poor as the movie attempts to amplify its stakes in a final act that is poorly executed and confounding at best.
While there may be potential for Armstrong to break out from this project, Firestarter, which flirts with the idea of a sequel or potentially a series spinoff from this feature, is best left ignored. As the boredom sets in, and a novel score composed by John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter, and Daniel Davies dies on the vine, this movie couldn’t generate heat if a gallon of gasoline was poured on top of it and lit with thousands of matches.
CAST & CREW
Starring: Zac Efron, Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Sydney Lemmon, Michael Greyeyes, Gloria Reuben, Kurtwood Smith, John Beasley, Tina Jung, Jamillah Ross
Director: Keith Thomas
Written by: Scott Teems
Adapted from the novel “Firestarter” by Stephen King
Release Date: May 13, 2022
Universal Pictures/Peacock