REVIEW #182 Firestarter (2022)

Desperate parents try to keep their daughter Charlie hidden from a secret federal agency who are desperate to harness her extraordinary powers. As Charlie begins to lose control of her powers, keeping her hidden becomes even harder and they soon find themselves on the run.

Firestarter has all of the foundations to be a film I would usually enjoy, unfortunately it wasn’t executed well at all. The storyline is awfully cliche, I’ve seen it countless times before, a film or tv show where a super powerful child is on the run from a sketchy federal agency. However even a storyline as over done as that one can be turned into a good film but this Blumhouse production missed the mark significantly. The trailer gives the impression of a fast paced, exciting, ‘on the run’ flick yet it was incredibly slow. Now I can forgive the slow pace if the performances we’re excellent and the plot full of substance but both were pretty uninteresting. Ryan Kiera Armstrong had periods where she stole the show but I felt as though her dialogue just became increasingly cringe-worthy as the film went on, even falling to the extreme lows of using “liar liar pants on fire” as she proceeded to scorch a man to death! Zac Efron is pretty forgettable, which is probably the perfect summarisation for Firestarter because I wouldn’t even say that this is a bad film it just falls flat and it will leave your mind just as quick as it entered, almost like the below average filler films that are pumped out on streaming sites every month.  The special effects were actually pretty good, especially for a film with a £13 million budget but with the exception of the final act, we just didn’t get to see much of it. Now I haven’t read the original Stephen King novel but I hope it rouses its consumers a lot more than this 2022 remake. If you’re going to remake something it at least has to be different from the original in some way otherwise what’s the point at all? I always try to refrain from discouraging people to go to the cinema because I want everyone to go more often, to keep the industry alive, but for Firestarter it’s probably worth waiting until it eventually ends up on one of the streaming sites. 

Overall (4/10)

Thanks for reading.

Callan