Due to the overwhelming popularity of The Sixth Sense and Unbreakable, M. Night Shyamalan has been pigeonholed as a director whose films always have a twist ending. While some of his movies after those two initial breakouts have indeed had third act rug-pulls, the majority of his work tends to be based on an elevator pitch of an idea that begs resolution. The Happening‘s was “why are people spontaneously killing themselves?” Old‘s was “what’s going on with this beach?” After Earth‘s was “who told Shyamalan it was a good idea to make this movie?” His latest high concept contraption, Knock At The Cabin, sports another tantalizing quandary but instead of the open-ended mystery that Shyamalan typically favors, there are really only one of two possible general resolutions for this specific gambit.

The story is set around a family of three — fathers Eric (Jonathan Groff) and Andrew (Ben Aldridge), along with their seven-year-old daughter Wen (Kristen Cui) — as they vacation at a secluded cabin in the woods. While collecting grasshoppers, Wen is approached outside the cabin by Leonard (Dave Bautista), a hulking second grade teacher who exchanges questions with her. Things get more ominous when three others in Leonard’s group — Sabrina (Nikki Amuka-Bird), Adriane (Abby Quinn) and Redmond (Rupert Grint) — also emerge from the woods brandishing makeshift weapons. Wen runs inside to warn her dads of the approaching quarrelsome quartet, who force their way into the cabin after a struggle and make a severe claim: that one of the three family members must willingly sacrifice themselves in order to prevent a closely impending apocalypse.

It would stand to reason that the rest of Knock At The Cabin from that point on would be a psychological thriller, wherein the family being held hostage would engage in a battle of wits with the interlopers to gain the upper hand. But that’s already making the assumption that the invaders are incorrect and misguided in their conviction that the world will end very soon if this sacrificial act isn’t carried out. Shyamalan instead spends most of the running time setting up a binary equation where we won’t know whether or not the apocalyptic premonitions are founded until the very end of the movie. Not only does this limit the scope and impact of the inevitable conclusion but it makes the preceding events more redundant than they needed to be. Leonard poses the question “will you make a choice?” to the family repetitively and takes action when they routinely refuse to commit the necessary penance; in the immortal words of Rush: “if you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice.”

After Old, Knock At The Cabin is the second movie in a row that Shyamalan has adapted from existing source material; this time, he’s recruited co-writers Steve Desmond and Michael Sherman to bring Paul G. Tremblay’s novel The Cabin at the End of the World to the screen. While Old was seemingly affected by the fact that it was shot during the COVID-19 pandemic, with unappealing cinematography and awkward editing that tried to disguise that the actors weren’t on set at the same time, Shyamalan’s latest effort isn’t marred by the same issues. The camerawork by Jarin Blaschke and Lowell A. Meyer has some flashy tricks up its sleeve but mainly settles for a handsome yet foreboding palette upon which these characters can express their anxieties and intentions. A few sequences, like one in which two characters struggle for a gun in a thumbprint-locked safe, crackle with an energy that isn’t sustained throughout the movie.

Bautista continues a streak of acting wins following last year’s Glass Onion and a smaller part in Dune: Part One that will likely be expanded in Dune: Part Two later this year. As the main spokesman for the four antagonists, he proves that he has the dramatic chops to lead an ensemble chamber piece like this. As with other wrestlers-turned-actors, filmmakers have learned how to use his oversized frame to their advantage. Leonard is positioned as a gentle giant whose hand is forced by supernatural circumstances; in his introductory scene with Wen, the pair even take turns plucking flower petals to invite allusions to Frankenstein. Shyamalan is able to create suspense for a few minutes at a time but the longer Knock At The Cabin goes on, the more obvious it becomes that he loses sight of the story that he ultimately wants to tell.

Score – 2/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Coming only to theaters is Magic Mike’s Last Dance, the conclusion to the Magic Mike trilogy starring Channing Tatum and Salma Hayek Pinault following the titular male stripper as he heads to London with a wealthy socialite who lures him with the offer of a lifetime.
Streaming on Amazon is Somebody I Used To Know, a romantic comedy starring Alison Brie and Jay Ellis about a workaholic whose trip to her hometown reunites her with an ex-boyfriend and finds her meeting a young woman who reminds her of the person she used to be.
Premiering on Netflix is Your Place Or Mine, another romantic comedy starring Reese Witherspoon and Ashton Kutcher about a man who looks after the teenage son of his best friend while she pursues a lifelong dream as they swap houses for one life-changing week.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

After winning Academy Awards for Best Director back-to-back years for Birdman and The Revenant, Alejandro González Iñárritu had many doors open to him in terms of what project to pursue next. That he walked through the one labeled “creative control with Netflix” is not surprising, given the kind of story he had in mind, but no less disappointing upon the final result. Bardo, False Chronicle Of A Handful Of Truths is very obviously the most personal film Iñárritu has made thus far but it’s also the most stubbornly formless and painfully pretentious one as well. It’s a remarkably self-involved effort from a director who isn’t known for modesty to begin with and while it’s a project that may mean a great deal to him, there’s simply no room left in the audience for us to take this story in.

Bardo loosely chronicles the day-to-day affairs of Mexican filmmaker/journalist Silverio Gama (Daniel Giménez Cacho), who lives in Los Angeles with his wife Lucía (Griselda Siciliani) and teenage son Lorenzo (Iker Sanchez Solano). He’s in line to receive a coveted journalism award in the States, about which he has mixed feelings because he senses that it’s due to geopolitical glad-handing more than his merit. His insecurity about his work is exacerbated by Luis (Francisco Rubio), a talk show host who was once friends with Silverio but jettisoned their relationship during the respective rises to fame. Along the way, he also tries to patch things up with his estranged daughter Camila (Ximena Lamadrid), who is living in America as well, before receiving the commendation for his life’s work.

But Bardo isn’t driven by plot as much as it’s jerked in different directions by the protagonist’s indulgent reveries, which take up the majority of the 160-minute runtime. These tangents naturally cause the audience to speculate whether these scenes are happening in reality or just in Silverio’s head but after a while, it’s unlikely they’ll care much either way. The surrealist sequences implement imagery from a host of origins, including figures from the Mexican–American War and conquistadors from centuries earlier who come to life before Silverio’s eyes. Sometimes the scenes are more along the lines of heightened reality, as when Silverio imagines a worst-case scenario talk show interview after he cancels at the last minute. There’s a darkly comedic running gag about a baby that Silverio and Lucía lost shortly after labor that weaves in gallows humor quite deftly.

There’s a running subtext in Bardo about Silverio’s (and, presumably, Iñárritu’s) internal conflict between living in the United States and yet still feeling like his home is still south of the border. When Silverio returns to Mexico and attends a party for his upcoming award, members of his extended family repeatedly rib him about sucking up to the “gringos” in Hollywood. There’s a lengthy sequence in which he recalls his emigration process to the US and then another in airport security where his citizenship is called into question by a couple TSA agents. Iñárritu obviously has a unique perspective on being torn between two countries that don’t fully accept him and him trying to work out these feelings through this film are by far its most illuminating aspects.

If he had made a movie that was more focused on this subject — or just more focused overall — it could have worked but there’s just too much filler that adds up to nothing. Iñárritu has showcased influence from cinematic luminaries like Fellini and Buñuel in the past but in trying to emulate the masters, he flies too close to the sun this time around. Luis gives an excoriating speech to Silverio about halfway through the film, concerning what he thinks about his new documentary, and it’s clear Iñárritu wrote in an attempt to inoculate himself from potentially similar criticisms about Bardo. The attempt at self-deprecation whiffs more of defensiveness than the worthwhile self-awareness that the filmmaker was able to mine more successfully in Birdman. When Netflix distributed Roma with Alfonso Cuarón in 2018, it was a love letter to his upbringing in Mexico City but by comparison, Bardo, False Chronicle Of A Handful Of Truths feels like a love letter Iñárritu wrote to himself.

Score – 2/5

More movies coming this weekend:
Playing only in theaters is Avatar: The Way of Water, the highly-anticipated sci-fi epic starring Sam Worthington and Zoe Saldaña continuing the story of the Na’vi alien race and the fight to protect their planet Pandora against a familiar threat.
Streaming on Amazon Prime is Nanny, a horror movie starring Anna Diop and Michelle Monaghan about an immigrant caretaker based in New York City who is forced to confront a concealed truth that threatens to shatter her precarious American Dream.
Screening at Cinema Center is Triangle of Sadness, a dark comedy starring Woody Harrelson and Charlbi Dean centering around a fashion model celebrity couple who join a cruise for the super-rich that doesn’t go according to plan.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Swooping in to spoil spooky season, the latest addition to the DC Extended Universe exacerbates the franchise’s identity crisis that has existed since its inception with Man Of Steel in 2013. Though Black Adam had been in development years before that Superman flick kicked off the whole shared universe, it finally lands with its original star attached and truckloads of marketing in its wake. It’s often said that movie studios look to replicate the “Marvel formula” when creating new superhero films but with this new offering, it seems Warners took their cues from Sony’s Spider-Man Universe instead. Like Venom and Morbius, Black Adam has historically been depicted as a villain in the comics but for the purposes of the movies, now he’s an anti-hero who’s just misunderstood.

Our story begins around 2600 BC in the fictional city of Kahndaq, where Teth-Adam (Dwayne Johnson) is bestowed powers by the Council of Wizards from Shazam! to escape a power-hungry king. In present day, archaeologist Adrianna Tomaz (Sarah Shahi) and her crew conjure up the super-powered Teth-Adam while trying to track down an artifact known as the Crown Of Sabbac. Recognizing the oppressive crime syndicate Intergang as similar to the tyrannical forces he opposed thousands of years ago, Teth-Adam uses his powers to pick apart the mercenaries and liberate the people of Kahndaq. Concerned over the violent tactics that he uses to impose his will, the Justice Society of America, led by Doctor Fate (Pierce Brosnan) and Hawkman (Aldis Hodge), look to set boundaries for the newly-awakened metahuman.

Johnson is one of the most bankable actors on the planet right now, so casting him in a movie from what is easily the most lucrative film genre at the moment makes overwhelming financial sense for Warner Bros. The issue is that his Black Adam is a joyless bore, utilizing none of the charm or charisma that turned wrestler The Rock into action star Dwayne Johnson. There are some one-liners that work in the film, dutifully delivered by Brosnan and Hodge, but they’re all fish-out-of-water punchlines where Black Adam is the butt of the joke. Adrianna’s son Amon, played by Bodhi Sabongui, is also meant to register as overly-exuberant comic relief but his fanboy giddiness while pitching catchphrases to Black Adam runs thin quite quickly.

Often, the secondary and tertiary characters are the most interesting ones that Black Adam has to offer but even they feel carbon-copied from existing superhero fare. The breadth and depth of Doctor Fate’s powers aren’t clearly conveyed but he shares enough in common with the MCU’s Doctor Strange that comparisons are inevitable. Justice Society of America newcomers Cyclone and Atom Smasher come across as retreads of Storm from the X-Men series and the Giant-Man from Marvel, respectively. Though these DC characters existed in comics well before their Marvel counterparts, this is the first time they’re appearing on screen and it’s hard not to think they’re late to the punch Additionally, the villain character played by Marwan Kenzari may take the crown as the DCEU’s most unconvincing antagonist.

Black Adam doesn’t reinvent the wheel as much as Johnson is endlessly touting that it does on social media but some of the action is more creatively violent than the DC movies have gotten to be in the past. Sure, there are bloodless fight scenes and bodies being flung in the air with no thought to how they might land but there are also moments of ruthlessness that are consistent with how the title character is set up. But director Jaume Collet-Serra uses the same brand of speed-ramped phantasmagoria that Zack Snyder popularized in his contributions to the franchise. Not all of the CG effects here look bad but the shots that do look especially unconvincing, recalling Johnson’s dreadfully-rendered Scorpion King character from The Mummy Returns over 20 years ago. Once Warners figures out how to implement Black Adam into their ever-expanding franchise, then he could serve as a nice counterpoint to the more straight-laced superheroes but his first time out is a dud.

Score – 2/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Opening in theaters is Prey For The Devil, a supernatural horror movie starring Jacqueline Byers and Colin Salmon about a nun who prepares to perform an exorcism and comes face-to-face with a demonic force that has mysterious ties to her past.
Expanding to local theaters is Till, a biographical drama starring Danielle Deadwyler and Jalyn Hall follows a mother who vows to expose the racism behind her son’s brutal lynching while working to have those involved brought to justice.
Premiering on Netflix is Wendell & Wild, a stop-motion horror comedy starring Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele about two scheming demon brothers who enlist the aid of 13-year-old to summon them to the Land of the Living.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

On its surface, Amsterdam has the hallmarks of a refined mid-budget studio film for which critics and cinephiles clamor routinely. Arriving at the beginning of the oft-competitive awards season, it’s helmed by an acclaimed writer/director in David O. Russell and sports an even more accomplished ensemble cast. It’s a movie about serious subjects that doesn’t take itself too seriously and is based on a true story (with wink-wink exceptions) that doesn’t slavishly adhere itself to the facts. Most importantly, it belongs to a group AMC refers to as Artisan Films, a term for pretty much any movie that leaps over the low bar of not being based on existing IP. Given all this pedigree, it’s a massive disappointment with sparks of genius that get snuffed out by an avalanche of dead-end plot points and a myriad of fussed-over characters.

After a “you’re probably wondering how I got here” prologue set in the early 1930s, Amsterdam flashes back to World War I where infantry doctor Burt Berendsen (Christian Bale) meets fellow soldier Harold Woodsman (John David Washington). The brothers in arms are wounded during battle and treated by nurse Valerie (Margot Robbie), whose eccentricities and magnetism draws the three of them together through wartime and afterwards when the trio move to Amsterdam together. After carefree years of dancing and palling around, Burt and Harold eventually leave for New York City, the former beginning his own medical practice and the latter becoming a lawyer. The death of their mutual commanding officer Bill Meekins (Ed Begley Jr.) brings them back together but a curious autopsy sends them on a chase for clues when they begin to suspect murder.

It’s about halfway through its runtime that Amsterdam finally focuses in on its real-life inspiration: the uncovering of a fascist political conspiracy by a group of oligarchs to overthrow FDR and install a dictator. While such a true story is worth investigating at feature length, the film gets way too bogged down with a cavalcade of detectives, spies, and hitmen to retain narrative cohesion. Familiar faces from Zoe Saldaña to Taylor Swift to Chris Rock show up to impart some passing notes on the storyline but don’t have a lasting impact beyond being recognizable. Most of the movie plays like a flittering hummingbird, rapidly whipping its pretty wings while staying roughly in the same place to sip on the nectar of vacuous words.

With films like The Fighter and American Hustle in his oeuvre, Russell has proven in the past that he can wield a star-powered cast but the story in Amsterdam simply gets away from him. Credited as the sole screenwriter, he gets too tangled up in knotty espionage threads and dubious romantic through lines to reach a clear set of themes that resonate. With a tighter screenplay, it’s possible that Russell’s brand of controlled chaos could have given this movie the verve that it needed to hum but without the right music, it’s just a cacophony of discordant allegros. The actors, which also include Oscar winners like Robert De Niro and Rami Malek, do what they can with the herky-jerky material and occasionally manifest moments of manic brilliance but ultimately, it all goes to pot.

I attended an IMAX screening of Amsterdam, a presentation typically reserved for big budget blockbusters due to the larger screen and enhanced sound, but I appreciate that 20th Century made it available in that format. Emmanuel Lubezki, the visionary cinematographer behind works like Birdman and The Revenant, brings forth signature touches like roving close-ups and extended takes to draw us into these characters. His camera also loves the faces of these movie stars and seems to revel in both their beauty and their imperfections. As social creatures, our eyes are drawn to faces and subconsciously, we go to the movies to study them and, hopefully, to learn something new about each other. It’s just a shame that Amsterdam has little to offer beyond that.

Score – 2/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Coming to theaters and streaming on Peacock is Halloween Ends, a slasher sequel starring Jamie Lee Curtis and Andi Matichak that allegedly caps off the showdown between masked murderer Michael Myers and perpetual survivor Laurie Strode.
Streaming on Hulu is Rosaline, a romantic comedy starring Kaitlyn Dever and Isabela Merced which retells Shakespeare’s most well-known story from the point of view of Romeo’s titular ex-girlfriend, who Romeo first claims to love before he falls for Juliet.
Happening at Cinema Center from October 13-16 is the Hobnobben Film Festival, which will screen a festival-record 128 films over the four-day event. Go to hobnobben.org to learn more about the festival, including the full schedule and ticket information.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

Based on the massively popular novel by the same name, the new period drama Where the Crawdads Sing tells the story of Kya Clark (Daisy Edgar-Jones), an underprivileged but resourceful young girl living in 1950s North Carolina. Abandoned first by her mother, then her siblings and finally by her abusive and alcoholic father, Kya learns to live on her own within their marsh-bound home. She meets fellow nature lover Tate (Taylor John Smith) while boating through the wetlands one day and a romance blooms between the two, until Tate unintentionally serves Kya with another round of abandonment when he leaves for college. She finds a rebound in the form of the football-playing Chase (Harris Dickinson), who commits to his relationship with Kya but also seems to be harboring secrets of his own.

The film’s framework is set around the discovery of Chase’s body under a fire tower by policemen in 1969 and the correlated trial a year later, in which Kya finds herself the lone murder suspect. Because the reclusive Kya is something of a local pariah, dubbed “The Marsh Girl” by unfeeling natives to the area, there aren’t many attorneys jumping at the opportunity to represent her in court. Once Kya is detained, the kindly lawyer Tom Milton (David Strathairn) ultimately steps up to her defense and during the trial, we’re shown extensive flashbacks that detail Kya’s time with Chase leading up to his death. With witnesses and evidence stacking up against her, Kya’s life is in Milton’s hands as he fights to defend her innocence.

Besides being touted as a book club pick by co-producer Reese Witherspoon, a big part of what made the best-seller that inspired Where the Crawdads Sing eclipse 12 million copies is its rich depictions of nature around the fictional town of Barkley Cove. Kya is drawn to ethology from a young age and her illustrations of the wildlife in the area eventually catch the eye of publishers looking to detail the Carolina swamplands. The film’s location work and sound design does a great job of adapting author Delia Owens’s descriptive prose to the frame, filling the aural and visual space with natural wonders for the endlessly curious Kya to document. In this context, every chirp and croak of this sonic landscape helps envelop us in her world even further.

Unfortunately, this intricate and evocative backdrop is squandered on a movie that unfolds like a Nicholas Sparks adaptation mixed with an overwrought courtroom drama. Director Olivia Newman bounces back and forth between the two timelines with too little attention being paid to the rhythm and tone of the narrative. But no matter when we are in the story, the events play like paperback pablum bogged down in romance and legal drama tropes. Even if we didn’t know from the start that Chase would end up dead, it’s obvious from his first interaction with Kya that they shouldn’t be together and that she has a deeper connection with Tate. It’s a strained love triangle wherein the movie indulges an obviously bad point of the triangle for too much of the running time.

With her presence in Hulu projects Fresh and Under the Banner of Heaven earlier this year, 24-year-old Daisy Edgar-Jones is clearly trying to get herself out there early in her burgeoning career. This is a tricky role because Kya is a very withdrawn person and in trying to stay true to the character, you run the risk as an actor of not emoting enough for the audience to connect with you. Although it’s not an unforgettable performance, Edgar-Jones does a fine job overall but the rest of the cast is generally unmemorable. Taylor John Smith and Harris Dickinson are handsome bores as the love interests and Strathairn is reliable as the tender litigator but it’s firmly within his expected wheelhouse. If you’re a devotee to the source material, Where the Crawdads Sing may float your boat but for someone like me who wasn’t wrapped up in the literary sensation, it was dead in the water.

Score – 2/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Coming to theaters is Nope, a science fiction movie starring Daniel Kaluuya and Keke Palmer about a pair of ranch-owning siblings who attempt to capture video evidence of an unidentified flying object with the help of a tech salesman and a documentarian.
Premiering on Netflix is The Gray Man, an action thriller starring Ryan Gosling and Chris Evans about a CIA mercenary who is on the run from a merciless former colleague after accidentally uncovering dark agency secrets.
Streaming on Amazon Prime is Anything’s Possible, a coming-of-age romcom starring Eva Reign and Abubakr Ali about a high school student who summons up the courage to ask a transsexual teen out on a date.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

It’s been nine years since Baz Luhrmann made a mess of The Great Gatsby and, if nothing else, gave the world a Leonardo DiCaprio GIF so ubiquitous that searches for “cheers” and “congrats” will likely generate it within the first two or three results. Now, the Aussie’s signature brand of moon-eyed maximalism is out to claim another cultural icon as his latest victim. The music biopic Elvis is about everything you would expect from the Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge! director: visually extravagant, thuddingly obvious, occasionally inspired, and above all, supremely self-satisfied. At 159 minutes, it plays like the longest supercut video ever uploaded to YouTube. Sure, it moves and doesn’t feel its length while you’re watching it but by the end, it becomes clear that little new has been conveyed about the King’s legacy.

Austin Butler sports the well-oiled mane of Memphis rocker Elvis Presley, who meets Colonel Tom Parker (Tom Hanks) backstage at a Louisiana Hayride show in 1954. The King’s signature shaking was born that night and Parker sees dollar signs in those hips, convincing Presley to let him manage his career from there on out. We then take a whirlwind tour through Elvis’s life and career, influenced by rock pioneers like Little Richard (Alton Mason) and B.B. King (Kelvin Harrison Jr.), the latter of whom particularly sees his potential to break down racial divides in the country. To avoid arrest for his lascivious gyrations, Parker arranges for Elvis to be drafted into the Army and while stationed in Germany, the heartthrob meets his future wife Priscilla (Olivia DeJonge).

There’s a popular exercise in film school used to study editing technique, where the professor will show a stretch of a film and the class is asked to clap when a cut is made in the movie. If that class was shown Elvis, it would generate a steady applause so convincing that it may finally make Luhrmann happy enough to stop chasing it so desperately. Amid the orgy of triple split screens and roving camera movements, there are some fun edits: a ferris wheel spinning out of control blended into an early hit record revolving on a phonograph was my personal favorite. But this is a chaotic scrapbook for a 20th century titan who deserves one but doesn’t really need one either, given how much has already been said and written about him.

Elvis is a tale of two performances. Presley has been portrayed numerous times of the big screen but it doesn’t take long for Butler to set himself apart as king of the King performances. He nails every era of Elvis’s walk of life, from the insecure greasy-haired kid still finding himself to the pelvic-thrusting showman to the aging bejeweled Vegas staple. Luhrmann doesn’t linger long on the negative aspects of Presley’s personality but Butler is still able to find some nuance and subtlety in the role amid the hagiography. I don’t know how much of what we hear from Elvis’s voice is actually Butler singing and after the first couple songs, I really didn’t care. The movie magic became real and the actor embodied the character so thoroughly that I didn’t question it from that moment on.

Then we have Tom Hanks. Colonel Tom Parker is a bizarre figure, a Dutch-born huckster whose origins are still shrouded in mystery to this day but whose relationship with the best-selling solo music artist of all time begs investigation. Even though Luhrmann frames this story around Parker recalling his time with Elvis during the Colonel’s final days, neither he nor Hanks get any closer to uncovering a deeper truth about this tenebrous figure. Hanks goes about Parker as a cock-eyed cross of PT Barnum by way of Dr. Demento, donning a fat suit and muttering with an unplaceable accent as he leers off-stage much less convincingly than he did in That Thing You Do! years ago. It’s a bizarre and bad performance that doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell at working in this otherwise down-the-line biography.

Score – 2/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Playing only in theaters is Minions: The Rise of Gru, a follow-up to the 2015 megahit which tells the origin story of the supervillain Gru as he meets the titular yellow creatures while living in the suburbs as a teenager.
Also exclusively in theaters is Mr. Malcolm’s List, a period drama starring Freida Pinto and Sope Dirisu about a young woman living in 1800s England who helps her friend to get revenge on a suitor who rejected her for failing a requirement on his list of qualifications for a bride
Streaming on Hulu is The Princess, a fantasy action movie starring Joey King and Dominic Cooper about a strong-willed princess who is kidnapped for refusing to wed a cruel suitor intent on taking her father’s throne.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup

The new sci-fi/horror hybrid Firestarter is quite a few things. It’s a remake of the Drew Barrymore-starring chiller that was released 38 years (almost to the day, as fate would have it) prior to this new iteration. It’s another Stephen King adaptation, an author whose work has been the direct inspiration for dozens of films, TV series and stage productions over the decades. It’s yet another modestly-budgeted Blumhouse Productions project, one of six slated for release this year alone. Most important for streaming war beancounters, it’s Peacock’s latest hope that prospective subscribers will be drawn in enough by the film’s familiar marketing to start their free trial and forget about cancelling after it expires. But perhaps it’s most pertinent to instead detail what Firestarter is not: engaging, well-crafted or necessary.

Firestarter‘s opening credits show video footage of college students Andy (Zac Efron) and Vicky (Sydney Lemmon) being interviewed for a clinical trial involving an experimental chemical drug known as Lot-6. Years later, the pair is married with 11-year-old Charlie (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) and all three are burdened with supernatural powers as a result of the exposure to Lot-6. Andy’s ability to psychically influence people (“the push”, as he calls it) and Vicky’s telekinesis are generally well-controlled but Charlie’s burgeoning pyrokinesis isn’t maintained as effectively. An incendiary incident at her school alerts agents of the Department of Scientific Intelligence, a shadowy government organization aiming to monitor and control those concealing superhuman faculties.

In retrospect, it’s easy to see how 1980s science-fiction like the original Firestarter, and Drew Barrymore’s preceding film E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, inspired the megahit series Stranger Things. The story points of a young girl discovering her growing superpowers and a group of youngsters hiding the supernatural force from scary government officials were fused together in the show’s first season. Netflix (which, curiously, is name-dropped twice during this Peacock product) saw the power in the nostalgia behind these cultural touchstones and has (at least until recently) coasted on Stranger Things‘s success since its premiere. Even with this wind at its back, this new Firestarter can’t fan the flames for long enough to set up a compelling story on its own terms.

The problems start with the dull script from Scott Teems, which doesn’t develop its protagonists well enough for us to care about them and doesn’t spend enough time with the antagonists to make them feel threatening. The inclusion of groan-inducing lines like “I don’t need to see your eyes to feel your fear” certainly don’t help the movie’s cause either. Some of these story elements could be overcome by strong performances but Efron and Armstrong don’t have the kind of chemistry together to sell the father-daughter relationship upon which the film’s pathos would presumably rely. The best acting comes courtesy of Michael Greyeyes as a troubled superhuman caught between the will of the DSI and the potential of Charlie’s future.

One aspect that is far above the pedigree of everything else in the film is the terrific musical score, a collaboration between vaunted horror composer John Carpenter, his son Cody and musician Daniel Davies. Electronic band Survive leaned heavily on John Carpenter’s synth-heavy scores when composing the music for Stranger Things but it’s even more fulfilling to hear original master at work again in the playground he helped to build. Eerie and enveloping, the pulsating music drives the narrative forward better than most of the characters and dialogue do. Sadly, the flat and uninspired cinematography by Karim Hussain can’t visually match what the trio of composers are able to accomplish sonically. Firestarter is a non-starter in the race between streaming services trying to outdo one another with brand new titles.

Score – 2/5

New movies coming this weekend:
Coming only to theaters is Downton Abbey: A New Era, a sequel to the 2019 TV-to-film adaptation starring Hugh Bonneville and Elizabeth McGovern following the Crawley family and Downton staff as they receive a royal visit from the King and Queen of Great Britain.
Also premiering only in theaters is Men, a folk horror film starring Jessie Buckley and Rory Kinnear about a young woman who goes on a solo holiday in the English countryside after the death of her husband and encounters an ominous presence there.
Streaming on Disney+ is Chip ‘n Dale: Rescue Rangers, a live-action/animated family movie starring John Mulaney and Andy Samberg about the titular chipmunks reuniting thirty years after their TV series to rescue a missing member of the original cast.

Reprinted by permission of Whatzup