Apologies now, this review might be shorter than many. It’s late but I am committed to the members of the Vampire Princesses domain who enjoy her work. Now many folks didn’t know about this one, even horror movie fans so first let me give you a trailer.

So if the idea of tween Superman as a horror movie doesn’t intrigue you in the slightest, you can probably stop here. If it does there’s a review for you below. I’ve been curious about this one since that trailer above dropped and yes having James Gunn’s name attached as a producer on that added to it. We’re talking the guy who wrote the screenplay for the remake of Dawn of the Dead, Lollipop Chainsaw, The Belko Experiment, and Slither. Oh yeah some little movie called Guardians of the Galaxy. This has promise.

Did it keep its promise though?

The movie was written by Brian Gunn (Journey 2: The Mysterious Island) and Mark Gunn (Journey 2: The Mysterious Island), which makes sense with the brother /cousin respectively on the producer staff. The thing is though I bet there’s an uncredited writer for James on this too, but well since it’s uncredited I can’t say it’s there officially. The two men, however, don’t exactly have a pedigree to say they can do horror. Pedigree is apparently not a always a requirement. The final product delivers everything on the tin as it were and doesn’t shy away from any of the topics involved. It’s fairly tight, fairly well holds to it’s own logic and consistency and even elevates some of the traditional comic tropes and puts them firmly in the horror genre.  The most obvious trope played with is the alliterative name of our protagonist, Brandon Breyer; but its not the last one. Director David Yarovesky gets his first theatrical release and its a solid one. His choice of shots is engaging, his overall framing is excellent, and while yes he uses many horror tropes he does them to great effect. It works especially well when unlike many horror movies where you have a disappearing shape, this one has cause to be able to do that. I think what works best between the script and direction is that this is how I could see the events playing out if they had happened as shown. At no point did I really go…that was an odd choice. It felt natural.

Elizabeth Banks, yes that one, goes hard into this one. I know I was impressed with her in Power Rangers as the villain, but here she just nails it as the adoptive mother to Brandon. She is the emotional core of the movie and while I was kind of numb (mostly tired) leaving the movie as I think to write this she kept me invested. She kept my interest as we watch Brandon evolve through the film. David Denman plays the adoptive father (oddly also from Power Rangers, but also The Office) and has to deliver a different performance than Banks and it works. Jackson Dunn has the other weight in the film as Brandon. Unfortunately, his performance is a bit one note. I believe this is intentional and as directed, but there’s a detachment in the acting that seemed almost the easy choice to go with. No fault of Dunn there, but it’s one of the weaker elements of an otherwise strong film. Granted the performance does have the right amount of creepy and endearing which is a hard balance with lesser actors or directors.

From a technical perspective there are a few shots which just take the bloody cake. One of them is in the second trailer (not linked) and it’s everything as promised. There are some gore effects I don’tr ecall seeing before and am pleased to have seen them now. At 90 minutes it’s tightly edited and tightly paced so there’s no room for opportunity there.

TL;DR

I told you this one was going to be short. There is not a lot to discuss that wouldn’t cross into spoiler territory. Brightburn kept its promise. It is everything it said it would be, nothing more and nothing less. I want to use this movie as an example of how to be properly subversive to the superhero genre, how to put the twist on it that is needed. It treats everything in the movie, and the audience itself, with respect and intelligence not explaining more than is needed and using show don’t tell to the right levels.

Should I see it?

Honestly, we’ve needed some really solid horror. We got it. If thats your jam, so is this movie.

Would you see it again?

Yeah actually. I would.

So you are buying it?

Absolutely.

Was it that good?

No. It’s just good. Sometimes that is enough. It was tonight. I enjoyed it. It delivered on its promise and really that’s all we need in a lot of cases.