Brightburn focuses on Tori and Kyle Breyer, played by Elizabeth Banks and David Denman respectively, a couple in the titular town in Kansas who find a spaceship that crashed near their home, housing a little boy. They adopt him, naming him Brandon, and hide the spaceship. Twelve years later, Brandon, now played by Jackson A. Dunn, begins to discover he has superpowers, and soon begins acting out, utilizing his powers in increasingly hideous ways.
The film bears intentional similarities to Superman’s origin stories, and is built around one basic setup: What if Superman grew up to not become a beacon of hope and symbol of good, but instead be a force of pure evil? And Brightburn delivers on exactly that. Whereas Clark Kent was inherently a good person who always did the right thing without giving it a second thought, Brandon commits acts of pure evil and has absolutely no remorse for any of his actions.
While this acts as a great subversive take on what is arguably one of the most powerful superheroes of all time, if not the most powerful, the commitment to such a premise does tend to lead to some issues. While Superman had an interesting backstory in which he struggles to fit in and honor his family’s legacy while still connecting with his family and friends on Earth, there’s really no struggle to Brandon’s story. He essentially just turns into pure evil and commits his acts of destruction from there.
Brandon is a very one-dimensional character, and while watching him in action does have some truly entertaining moments, it’s hard to truly get invested in his story. The idea of a little kid struggling with notions of trying to do the right thing but having the urge to commit acts of pure evil would have been a great set up for a truly engaging movie. He would have been someone audiences would want to sympathize with but just can’t, and to see other characters also struggling to potentially help him would have made for some truly emotional scene-work.
However, the film fails to capitalize on such an intriguing premise. Brandon is a truly hateful character, and he’s not someone who audiences can enjoy to hate. He flips like a switch fairly early on in the movie and never really has any redeeming moments from there on out. He just gets increasingly more infuriating to watch to the point that it’s incredibly easy to root against this kid. He seriously injures his classmate and doesn’t lose an ounce of sleep over it. He murders relatives in cold blood, and doesn’t even pretend to care when his parents “break the news” to him.
And the film rushes through most of these scenes, jumping from one moment to the next without ever really properly exploring the fallout of some of these terrible acts. Characters are only given so much time to react before jumping onto the next big horrible thing that Brandon does. Almost every scene just consists of Brandon doing evil things because he needs to be the exact opposite of Superman. And as the film builds up to exploring just how much of an effect this character can truly have on the world, it cuts itself short at a mere 90 minutes.
Despite what is easily the most crucial character being severely underwritten, the film is actually not flat-out bad, and actually does have its share of redeeming qualities. As mentioned, when Brandon is in action, it actually is genuinely entertaining. In addition to being an “evil Superman” movie, this is also a horror movie, and a lot of these elements are done exceptionally well as Brandon creepily monitors relatives and townspeople. These scenes don’t rely on jump scares and are lit in such a way that they genuinely build up suspense so that the audience doesn’t know what to expect next.
There are some moments here with some fairly extreme violence, and these will be some of the more polarizing aspects of the movie. While these moments aren’t necessarily drawn out and constantly put at the forefront of each sequence, there are a few moments that get incredibly bloody for a few brief moments, and aren’t exactly for the squeamish. These may be too much for some viewers, though genre enthusiasts will certainly get a kick out of these moments because they actually are quite creative and original.
By far the movie’s most enjoyable aspects are the performances from Banks and Denman. These two carry the movie. It’s hard to deny just how great their chemistry is with one another, and it’s very easy to believe these two as a married couple. And seeing both of them just react to their son‘a awful behavior gives this movie just enough heart to make it watchable. In the opening scenes, it’s established just how they were such a fully functioning, perfectly happy family for so many years. To see it all fall apart, and them trying to reconcile with this, can be heartbreaking. As far as the characters themselves, they don’t necessarily always make the best choices, especially when it comes to how they try handling Brandon’s behavior at first, but the performances from these two really elevate the material and allow them to be such likable protagonists.
Brightburn delivers exactly on its promise of an evil Superman story, and unfortunately, shoots itself in the foot because of that. By committing to a character who does nothing but heinous acts of violence scene after scene with nothing redeemable about him, there’s really no gravitas that even allows audiences to enjoy hating him. The film feels rushed and only allows so much time to explore how characters would be effected by this young kid who’s nothing but pure evil. However, despite some screenplay issues, there are some redeeming qualities. It’s difficult to deny just how well this film plays up its horror elements, being both creepy and absolutely bloody at times. Though it’s Elizabeth Banks and David Denman’s convincing lead performances that gives this film the boost it needs to be just enjoyable enough, even if it’s only to see once.
Recommendation: Proceed With Caution
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