Brightburn

Image credit: Wikipedia

I admire the horror genre for a number of reasons, the main being that it’s a class of films that one can enjoy if they are either good or bad. A schlocky, or ‘bad’ horror movie has a wondrous level of enjoyment to it because of certain ridiculousness, predictability, and sometimes sincerity in its artistic-ness that makes the whole thing laughable. My partner and I are particular fans of these types of movies.

Despite having the perk of a good movie experience if the film’s done well and a enjoyable experience if it’s done badly, but with that sense of knowing fun, it’s still not impossible to a) get a bad horror movie or b) have a disappointing experience because the film was not what you thought it was going to be. We had a recent experience of the latter when we went and saw Brightburn.

This superhero horror directed by David Yarovesky and produced by James Gunn tells the story of a young married couple that adopt an alien baby boy when a mysterious space ships crashes onto their property. They raise the child as their own, naming him Brandon, and then the film flashes forward 12 years to where Brandon is starting to hit puberty. A series of strange events including sleepwalking, hearing alien voices in his head, and discovering he has inhuman strength and invulnerability causes Brandon to confront his parents about his identity. But rather than use his powers for good, Brandon becomes aggressively aware of his superiority and by this time, not even his own family is safe.

I do believe that selective bits of information regarding this film were absorbed into our brains and influenced our decision to head to the movies to see it. This selectivity planted an assumption of what the film would be like and, therefore was completely shattered when that was not what we received. Basically, we went into the theatre thinking that this would be a silly, but fun schlocky horror film that we could laugh and cringe through, James Gunn having a hand in it and all.

We were wrong.

Funnily enough the disappointing experience that we had with Brightburn came from our expectation of a bad movie and being presented with an actually pretty good one, which completely overrode the active parts of our minds and then started stimulating the ones that we didn’t intend on using.

Like many other horror movies starring children, Brightburn explores the screwy effects of puberty and social introversion and awkwardness, just making it more horrific by giving the victim superpowers. Like Carrie or Tetsuo from Akira, Brandon unleashes literal Hell on his community, but this is only where half of the horror comes from. The rest stems from the film’s exploration into the nature of humanity and how it’s (funnily enough) only a human thing. Despite being raised as a human, Brandon is obviously some other kind of predator, and the film does a really good job of achieving a hefty amount of creepiness and unnerve by having this seemingly human boy show a complete lack of remorse for his violence.

Image credit: USA Today

Speaking of violence, this film is definitely not for the fainthearted. If, like me, you really struggle with realistic depictions of graphic mutilations and injuries (we’re talking glass shards in eyes and jaws breaking off in car crashes), then best go and watch something else. However, I will say that the gore and violence in the movie does add something to the film and isn’t there for the sake of yanking some jumps and face-covering from the audience. While I don’t particularly like it, I do appreciate it.

At the end of the day my only problem with Brightburn is that it was too good and not at all what my brain had tricked me into thinking it was. While a lot of it is recognisable in terms of genre aesthetic and various tropes, it’s a film that is subtly different to other movies that look like it and is made quite cleanly, with a lot of care and mastery of the genre.

If you like horror movies to scare and unnerve you, then by all means go and see Brightburn.

Director: David Yarovesky, 2019

Cast: Elizabeth Banks, David Denman, Jackson A. Dunn, Emmie Hunter, Matt Jones, Meredith Hagner, Becky Wahlstrom, Terence Rosemore, and Gregory Alan Williams