Stephen King didn’t start the fire, but his story Firestarter, returning to the big screen this weekend for its second big screen adaptation (and first since the 1980s) has been burnt to a crisp, smouldering all the intrigue and soul to ashes.
The source book is about 10-year-old Charlie (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) whose parents were once psychic test subjects, and she herself now has the ability to, as the title says, start fires with her mind. Now, she and her Dad (Zac Efron) are on the run from an unnamed government agency who wants to run tests on them.
For a movie about a young girl who can use psychic powers to start fires, there’s shockingly few scenes where Charlie uses her fire starting powers. And when she does, very rarely is it anything more than a plot device to further jeopardize her family’s safety.
Firestarter’s script is, plainly said, horrible. It’s disingenuous and generic, with the spoken dialogue empty of specific details as if the writers were afraid to make decisive character choices. Without specifics of how Charlie, her family or anyone else feels or what they’re thinking - there’s nothing interesting for audiences to connect to.
The likability isn’t made any easier with the occasionally gruesome language (like from the insensitive Captain Hollister) or gruesome images (like an innocent cat being burned alive before being euthanized.)
All of the horror elements are based on cheap jump scares: dark rooms go quiet before something jumps out, or villains emerge from the shadows when you think it’s safe. While a few of these moments connect, most of the horror-based elements are really just cheap surprises that do little to add anything of value.
None of the film’s shortcomings are the fault of the cast. Efron and Armstrong in particular make for great leads as a father and daughter learning to live in harmony with their powers.
Efron’s vulnerability also helps the core message of how we reckon with hurting people by accident: "When you hurt people, it doesn’t just hurt them. You hurt everyone around them too - and you don’t come back from that.”
That’s a great message, especially in a father and daughter relationship. That’s also why the disappointing ending (as cool as the climactic scene is) is such a betrayal of what the story’s main theme claims to be.
I have mixed feelings about the film’s brevity. On one hand, it’s endlessly dull to see 90 minutes go by with so few events of consequence happening. It’s also hard to justify a trip to the movies for something so small-scale. On the other hand, you can’t fault a story for maintaining its intimacy amid the pressure to be a big-screen spectacle.
If small shocks are all you need, this is the first proper scary movie to come to theatres in months. But this isn’t some big screen inferno - despite its adult content, this has all the impact of a young scouts first campfire.
Sadly, the spark fizzles out before any element in Firestarter can grow into full-sized flames.
Firestarter
4 out of 10
14A, 1hr 34mins. Sci-Fi Horror Thriller.
Directed by Keith Thomas.
Starring Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Zac Efron, Sydney Lemmon, Michael Greyeyes and Gloria Reuben.
Now Playing at Film.Ca Cinemas, 5 Drive-In, Cineplex Winston Churchill and Cineplex Oakville & VIP.
