Brightburn: This is definitely not a total ripoff of Superman.

Brightburn is a horror movie that is the origin story of a super villain. It starts with Tori (Elizabeth Banks) and Kyle Bryer (David Denman), a couple unable to conceive a child. One night there is a loud crash in the woods behind their farm and they find a baby that seems to have landed from space. Sound familiar? They name the child Brandon (Jackson A. Dunn) and raise him as their adopted son. Then at the age of 10 he begins to hear voices and soon discovers that he has superhuman strength among other powers like shooting lasers from his eyes, and flight. Sound familiar yet?

I was excited for this movie when I saw the trailer since it gave the impression that it was a horror movie that was essentially the birth of an evil Superman type character. I guess on the later it delivered, maybe too well. The movie didn’t really feel original it felt like the writers read the series of “what if...?” comics marvel began publishing in the 70s and went “oh man what if Superman was evil?” and just wrote a shitty fan fiction. I would have been okay with the idea, but they made Brandon a carbon copy of Superman. Let me quickly list the similarities:
1. Alliteration in their named. Clark Kent. Brandon Breyers.
2. Crash landed on Earth as a baby
3. Similar Powers
4. Wears the blanket they were wrapped in as their costume
5. Only weak to one thing
How the film got made and wasn’t shut down by DC is beyond me. Even with that said I think the movie could have been interesting if they had kind of fleshed out the circumstances that caused Brandon to become this evil being. But instead they went the Manchurian Candidate route and the movie became this pseudo horror movie. It had Brandon stalking and killing people using his powers. There were some gruesome kills, but I never got that tension and anticipation you would normally feel with a horror movie.

The movie was made on a $7 million budget and it definitely looked like it. The final sequence was a laughably bad green screen. The only thing I did like was the cowl that Brandon wore; it was made from his blanket but reminiscent of Cthulhu with the use of shoelaces; I thought that was smart.

My main issue with the movie is that there was no conflict. There wasn’t anything or anyone opposing Brandon. The entire movie you just kind of watched him use his power to terrorize people. It was boring. It just felt that as a viewer nothing was at stake. Even in a slasher film there are people that try to fight off their inevitable death but in this movie everyone just died without a fight. Even by the end nothing really happened. I was hoping for a setup for a sequel or a series, where there would be a glimpse of someone that may oppose Brandon and there wasn’t. That made the movie fall completely flat for me. I even sat through the entire credits hoping that there would be a scene teasing at something bigger but no.

I don’t know if it’s fair to judge a movie based on the set up for a sequel but for Brightburn it really needed something to make it stand out because on its own it was boring. Characters weren’t developed because they were there just to be killed. Even Brandon didn’t get too much character development. If it was the first film and meant to set up something bigger it could have been decent. This isn’t just the me talking as someone who grew up on the marvel universe and is sad it’s over. The whole time it felt like a set up to a big payoff that never came. The movie doesn’t work as a one off.

I don’t really have too much else more to say. The movie was only an hour and a half but felt a lot longer.

TL;DR: Brightburn more like DullBurn. Sick Burn! Amirite? 3 fake Clark Kents out of 10.