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There was plenty of room to improve on the original, but Firestarter trips over that low bar and tumbles toward the bottom of the long list of Stephen King adaptations. Read critic reviews
It isn't offensively awful, but this Firestarter is still a half-hearted letdown compared to the book -- or even the mediocre first film adaptation. Read audience reviews
Watch Firestarter with a subscription on Peacock, rent on Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video, Vudu, or buy on Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video, Vudu.
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For more than a decade, parents Andy (Zac Efron; Extremely Wicked, Shockingly Evil and Vile; The Greatest Showman) and Vicky (Sydney Lemmon; Fear the Walking Dead, Succession) have been on the run, desperate to hide their daughter Charlie (Ryan Kiera Armstrong; American Horror Story: Double Feature, The Tomorrow War) from a shadowy federal agency that wants to harness her unprecedented gift for creating fire into a weapon of mass destruction. Andy has taught Charlie how to defuse her power, which is triggered by anger or pain. But as Charlie turns 11, the fire becomes harder and harder to control. After an incident reveals the family's location, a mysterious operative (Michael Greyeyes; Wild Indian, Rutherford Falls) is deployed to hunt down the family and seize Charlie once and for all. Charlie has other plans.
Rating: R (Violent Content)
Genre: Horror, Mystery & thriller, Drama, Sci-fi
Original Language: English
Director: Keith Thomas
Producer: Jason Blum, Akiva Goldsman
Writer: Scott Teems
Release Date (Theaters): wide
Release Date (Streaming):
Box Office (Gross USA): $9.3M
Runtime:
Distributor: Universal Pictures
Production Co: Angry Adam Productions, Blumhouse Productions, BoulderLight Pictures, Weed Road Pictures
Sound Mix: Dolby Digital
Aspect Ratio: Scope (2.35:1)
have never seen the 1984 original movie starring Drew Barrymore but I have to assume it's got to be better than the 2022 Blumhouse remake. Stephen King adaptations have a very wide range in quality, and from other reports Firestarter is one of King's most straightforward novels. The most interesting aspect of this movie is that the score is provided by legendary horror director John Carpenter, as well as Cody Carpenter and Daniel A. Davies, and Carpenter was going to be the director of the 1984 Firestarter before the studio replaced him after the poor box-office performance of 1982's The Thing, widely regarded now as a classic of its genre. Otherwise this is a pretty generic chase movie where people with superpowers are trying to stay hidden from evil government agencies looking to capture them and use them as weapons. I was reminded of that X-Men TV series The Gifted that lasted one season in 2017 for much of the movie. The dialogue is quite bad, including one climactic line that had me howling: "Liar, liar, pants on fire," and she doesn't even set the person's pants on fire. The parenting miscues for Zac Efron's psychic dad character are manifest, and it's still strange to see the High School Musical star enter the dad part of his career. Efron's character and his onscreen wife bicker about how best to protect and support their powerful little daughter who could go nuclear and has, in anger, set her mom on fire. Apparently, ignoring a problem isn't the best solution. Regardless, the father-daughter moments are weakly written and you won't care about any characters. There's also a really extended and disturbing sequence of an animal in misery after being burned by out little firestarter, so that's great at creating empathy. Even at just 90 minutes, this movie is a boring slog. By the end, I didn't care who was being set on fire because the big thing that went up in smoke was my patience and my time. Nate's Grade: C-
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