Firestarter

You might recall the poster or DVD artwork of Drew Barrymore as a child standing with a look of anxiety with flames behind her in the 1984 horror-thriller titled Firestarter or recall reading the original Stephen King novel. Firestarter (1984) is considered to be a minor King adaptation, and Stephen King even disowns it. Personally, I thought the original Firestarter was a vastly underappreciated, well-crafted suspense-drawer and a genuine catharsis on childhood angst. The film also offered mesmerizing set-pieces, and astounding pyrokinetic special effects. Perhaps I hold some nostalgia for the original as well, since the film holds endless childhood memories of when I used to watch this film as it aired as part of the horror-double feature on Saturday afternoons with my grandmother on TV-20 Detroit.

Revisionism has been kind to the film over the years, even though it’s never reached the beloved status that it deserves, much like many other King horror adaptations, such as Carrie, Misery, The Shining, and It, to name a few. Aimed at bringing a newer generation that is unfamiliar with the source material and original movie with the portrait of a troubled young girl who protects her father and unleashes her pyrokinesis superpowers over coercive bureaucrats, director Keith Thomas’ slightly watchable but underwritten third feature shuns the original film’s tension-building and sharply-scripted character exchanges in favor of a hurried, straight-faced adaptation, imbued with mostly flat characters, plot holes, a dramatically inert narrative drama, and of course, a massive amount of CGI fire.

The Blumhouse/Universal film will most likely find an audience as it is streamed on Peacock, but it will eventually fall off the B.O. list and be inevitably forgotten about due to just how uneventful and inert the film is. Following a similar pattern to many other Stephen King adaptations that were updated adaptations or “remakes,” such as Carrie (2013), It (2017), Pet Sematary (2019), and Children of the Corn (2020). Sadly, the recent Firestarter doesn’t match the results of its predecessor or Carrie (which it plays as a companion piece to). Thomas fails to elevate or transcend his new film, in which he holds so much potential but ends up dissolving with way too many missed opportunities.

There are certainly reasons to want to update Firestarter now, especially with its original cast, in which the iconic George C. Scott delivered a dramatically effective, but problematic performance as John Rainbird, a Native American bounty hunter who is hired by a secret government agency. He is replaced here more accurately by Michael Greyeyes, who seems to deliver the most layers to his performance in the film but isn’t left with as much dramatic weight as Scott’s character and performance had in the original. The themes of the story already have a lot to say about anger, family, and being an outsider in an anxiety-inducing world. While the film’s leads are given some emotional weight by Zac Efron and newcomer Ryan Kiera Armstrong, staying true to the father-daughter bond that made the original so involving. However, it doesn’t feel as dynamic and not much feels at stake as it did with a young Drew Barrymore and David Keith. The story is mostly similar, as the father-daughter embark on a runaway after the devastating death scene of the mother, which holds the potential of hooking the viewer in just how Charlie (Armstrong) and Father Andy McGee (Efron), who also holds the power of telepathy after participating in a secret government lab test, end up passing their powers to their young daughter, who can’t seem to contain or control them.

Like in the original, we learn Andy met and fell in love with Vicky (Sydney Lemmon) during the experiment that was managed by The Shop. Years later, into their marriage, we see Charlie in control of his telepathy as Charlie loses control of her powers each time she experiences anxiety, bullying, or confrontation, which leads to her catching her mother’s hands on fire, except in this version she isn’t wearing oven mitts. Once she unleashes her power during a game of dodgeball in her class, it doesn’t take long for The Shop to find the whereabouts of the McGee family. In replacing the role of Martin Sheen, Captain Hollister (Gloria Reubin), who has been searching for Andy since Charlie’s birth, ends up hiring Rainbird (Greyeyes) as Vicky, Andy, and Charlie go on the road to avoid being pulled apart for weaponized research and further human experimentation by the government.

While the build-up holds promise, the film instantly derails with its thin screenplay by Scott Teems (Halloween Kills), which abandons a lot of stronger characterizations from the original story and film and makes almost every element feel lightly sketched. It is here where the film gets so much wrong that makes the original look even stronger by comparison. Call it faint praise, but the exchanges between Charlie and Rainbird were so effective in the original, and the newer film abandons those dynamics and ends up giving Rainbird very little to do, which is quite disappointing considering just how effective and menacing Greyeyes is—see him in Wild Indian. Due to a shorter running time of less than 90 minutes, that’s also around 20 minutes shorter than the original, the successor just doesn’t feel like a successful modification, it just feels more ungainly and underwritten.

The same can be said about its unremarkable visual style, in which the aesthetic shots are mostly taken with longer lenses and everything is composed of photography that attempts to feel suffocating and anxiety-inducing, but never delivers the impact, and the tone feels ripped from a made-for-cable mini-series. While the film’s score, composed by horror icon John Carpenter, his son Cody Carpenter, and Daniel Davies, maintains an atmosphere, it gives us a glimpse of what the original might have felt like if he had directed it. Carpenter was originally hired to direct the original Firestarter but was let go after Christine and The Thing underperformed at the box office at the time. However, the updated version eschews all the atmosphere, intensity, and mood that made the original so thrilling. Even the pacing is off, with nearly the entire cast being short-changed by a hurried narrative and unfocused dynamics that fail to infuse the tension as successfully as the original did.

Dismiss all the cultural appropriation to George C. Scott’s performance as John Raybird in the original Firestarter; at the very least, his character was given layers and exceptional exchanges with Charlie and other characters. Sadly, Greyeyes, who is certainly up for the task and has the acting talent to match Scott’s character, isn’t given the depth or layers for the character, who is sadly left lightly sketched, and he’s used more as a plot device.

Charlie’s bursts of fire are also bland here, especially throughout the film. They aren’t given as much pathos or catharsis that was conveyed so well in De Palma’s Carrie or the way Barrymore utilized it in the original. What follows in the second and third acts is a massive disappointment. The scenes of the discreet government building feel like borrowed set-pieces from lesser X-Men films; and the denouement is dull with very little emotional pull and no payoff. It’s a disappointing remake of an original movie that, sadly, is already undervalued and, at its best, suggests that some narratives should just be left alone even if they aren’t as iconic. If anything, hopefully more will want to seek out the 1984 version instead.