Horror remakes can truly be a hit or miss for me. They can be a hit with something like “The Invisible Man” and “The Fly”, but they can be a huge misfire like “Poltergeist” and “Flatliners”. Keith Thomas, director of the highly-praised 2019 indie “The Vigil”, helms this remake of the 1984 widely-hated Stephen King adaptation “Firestarter”. From watching this remake after seeing the original (which is not a bad film, but not very held up), this will probably be very forgotten by many including me. It is not something that I despised like other people seemed to hate it and I have seen much worse remakes than “Firestarter”. However, the dullness still does kinda show in this remake.
This remake follows a different story structure compared to the 1984 original. Charlie has special pyrokinesis powers while her father and her mother got telepathy and telekinesis respectively at a scientific experiment at college. Charlie’s powers still pertain in this remake where whenever she gets set off, she starts to unleash a fire in the location she is in. She of course did not mean to unleash the fire in general and has a big heart. Instead of the film starting off where Charlie and his father Andrew runaway from a group called “The Shop”, it starts out with Charlie struggling with his powers in school. There is a government agency coming after Charlie for her unique powers called DSI. The government agency storyline does not care to expand like in the original, where the agency did a full experiment on her powers.
I had a mixed bag with this film to be honest. Like I said before, I did not quite despise this movie like everyone else does, but it is indeed a step down from the original in terms of heart and creativity. The original may not hold up, but it had a lot of care and thought when it came to the father and daughter relationship between Charlie and Andrew. The Keith Thomas remake however does have that magic power at first with that chemistry, but blows it up like a whoopee cushion.
I actually might be one of the handful of people who found some positives to this film. I kind of liked the first thirty-five minutes of this film other than the school scenes that always come off like live-action cartoons. At first, I actually liked Zac Efron and Ryan Kiera Armstrong’s chemistry as well as them separately. There is some care and heart put into the relationship with them. I also thought that John Beasley as Irv Manders, who is similar to the character Art Carney played in the original, was a huge improvement over Carney because he actually had some care about the chaos Charlie did.
After these thirty-five minutes, it starts to become this bland and lifeless horror film that loses any sort of promise.
The rest of the weak aspects is about as bland as any horror remake can be. The acting other than Efron, Armstrong, and Beasley are just so paper thin. I especially thought Michael Greyeyes as Rainbird to be the worst performance in it. I can tell he was truly sleepwalking throughout the film. He has no emotional vigor nor tension like George C. Scott in the original. At first, I liked Sydney Lemmon as Charlie’s mother, Vicky Tomlinson-McGee, but she becomes a basic block of wood.
All in all, “Firestarter” will become one of the many forgettable horror reboots that will end up being a $3 clearance deal from FYE.
Grade: 5/10
