Firestarter (2022)

Firestarter is a 2022 American science-fiction horror thriller film directed by Keith Thomas, made by Blumhouse Productions, and starring Zac Efron and Ryan Kiera Armstrong in the lead roles. It is based on the 1980 novel of the same name by Stephen King, and is the second film adaptation of the book after the 1984 adaptation.

Plot
A couple desperately try to hide their daughter, Charlie, from a shadowy federal agency that wants to harness her unprecedented gift for turning fire into a weapon of mass destruction. Her father taught her how to defuse her power, but as Charlie turns 11, the fire becomes harder and harder to control. When a mysterious operative finally finds the family, he tries to seize Charlie once and for all -- but she has other plans.

Why It's a Dumpster Fire

 * 1) The movie's pacing is just so bad. Important moments are glossed over, while unnecessary moments are dragged out longer than they should be.
 * 2) * The plot just meanders around for a bit, taking a while to get going.
 * 3) *The film also changes the novel's original ending. While changing the ending is fine for an adaptation, and can be down well for a different audience as shown in Disney movies, like Meet the Robinsons, this change makes no sense as explained below.
 * 4) The story deviates from the 1984 film and the Stephen King's original novel being vastly inferior to both. For example, Andy does not stay imprisoned at the Shop for six months and Charlie avoids being captured by the Shop so that she could train her powers to act like too similar akin to Eleven from mh:besttvshows:Stranger Things.
 * 5) The characters are bland and uninteresting, and due to the bad writing and don't have any real chemistry.
 * 6) Boring dialogue and mediocre acting from most of the characters aside from Charlie and Andrew.
 * 7) The film's climax is rather rushed messing up the pacing way more than it should.
 * 8) There's a scene where a cat gets killed violently, which doesn't have any purpose other than shock value.
 * 9) There aren't very many scenes where Charlie uses her powers, despite the premise.
 * 10) * The special effects are pretty hit-or-miss.
 * 11) Despite being talented as the director for The Vigil, Keith Thomas was very lame and wasted directing choice for this film.
 * 12) As previously stated before, the ending deviates from the book. In the original book and 1984 movie, Charlie kills everyone (including Rainbird) with her pyrokinesis and leaves the facility. Only for her to come back to the media to tell her story. Here, this ending shows Rainbird, somehow reformed, rescuing Charlie after she is subdued by men in fire-protection suits, before walking off together.

Redeeming Qualities

 * 1) Decent acting from Ryan Kiera Armstrong and Zac Efron.
 * 2) Great score by John Carpenter, his son Cody, and Daniel Davies.
 * 3) Some of the kills are great, such as Charlie burning an agent alive inside of his car.

Critical response
Firestarter was panned by critics, audiences and fans of Stephen King alike, with many deeming it to be inferior to the original 1984 film (despite it receiving only mixed reviews). On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 11% of 147 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 3.70/10. The audiences score was 47%. The website's consensus reads, "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.", while audiences consensus reads, "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.". Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 32 out of 100, based on 29 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C-" on an A+ to F scale, while PostTrak reported 50% of audience members gave it a positive score, with 27% saying they would definitely recommend it.

Box office
As of June 18, 2022, Firestarter has grossed $9.5 million in the United States and Canada and $5.3 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $14.8 million.

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