Brightburn

"I'm the baaaad guy. Dah."

- Billie Ellish

Brightburn is a 2019 American superhero horror drama film directed by David Yarovesky, written by Mark Gunn and Brian Gunn, and produced by James Gunn and Kenneth Huang. The film was released in the United States on May 24, 2019 by Sony Pictures Releasing.

Plot
After a difficult struggle with fertility, Tori Breyer's dreams of motherhood come true with the arrival of a mysterious baby boy. Brandon appears to be everything Tori and her husband, Kyle, ever wanted -- bright, talented and curious about the world. But as Brandon nears puberty, powerful darkness manifests within him, and Tori becomes consumed by terrible doubts about her son. Once Brandon begins to act on his twisted urges, those closest to him find themselves in grave danger.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) Brightburn was supposed to introduce and revolutionize a new subgenre of horror dubbed "Superhero horror", which was to mix in superheroes and horror elements, but it ended up being instead of a generic horror movie, but also with attempts of including dramatic and very few superhero elements, despite the latter was supposedly the film's selling point.
 * 2) * It is also considered pretty late to be declared as the first superhero horror film too, as it was already explored by several films before this, either made by Marvel, DC, or some original IPs, most notably The Toxic Avenger series (even though, it self-described as a superhero comedy splatter, except for the upcoming reboot film, where it said to finally embraces its identity as a superhero horror-comedy). Thus the film's proclaiming itself as the first Superhero horror film, artificially desperate.
 * 3) It suffers through a horrible amount of horror movie clichés:
 * 4) * The main story is just the whole "spooky child" plot but with a superhero twist.
 * 5) * Everyone that's good dies.
 * 6) * Brandon's mother, Tori, looks up the strange things about Brightburn online.
 * 7) * Cheap overuse of jumpscares.
 * 8) * Signs of being made by the antagonist.
 * 9) The story is very lazy. Not only is it just a generic "spooky child" story as stated in WIS #2, but it also just rips off the whole Superman origin story. How come DC hasn't sued Sony yet?
 * 10) * The story also is clearly plagiarized from the 2017 Superman comic Bump in the Night, even ending with the young Superman destroying the Kent farm and heading off to presumably destroy the rest of humanity, a striking similarity to how Brightburn ends to the Superman of this story as a child (at least in appearance).
 * 11) It's not scary at all, even when it tries to be so, like Noah's death when his jaw is snapped open after being in a wreck.
 * 12) No real villains, the closest we got is Kyle, Brandon’s adopted father, Erica, mother of Brandon’s crush, Caitlyn, and Brandon's gym bullies.
 * 13) A very unfunny and disgusting joke where Brandon's father, Kyle, tells him the meaning of sex and how he "plays with his penis."
 * 14) The characters are all flat, unlikable, and by far, stupid.
 * 15) * Brandon is a flat-out jerk and so overpowered. He demands his father to give him a gun, crushes a little girl's hand, even becoming a pervert to her, killed a waitress (Erica, who was the little girl's mother), and literally even murdered his family, even though they did everything they could to raise him correctly, and it's all because Tori told Brandon about his arrival. Brandon also doesn't get punished for any of this.
 * 16) * Kyle Breyer begins treating Brandon like trash in the third half of the film, going as far as to curse at him, and even shooting him in the head, resulting in Kyle's death.
 * 17) * Erica, after Brandon crushes her daughter's hand, demands him to be arrested despite being an accident. As a result, Brandon as Brightburn kills her while working at the fast food restaurant.
 * 18) * Noah literally swears in front of his nephew, Brandon.
 * 19) * Tori comforts Brandon, literally before she kills him, which results in her death.
 * 20) Mediocre CGI and special effects.
 * 21) Graphic bloody scenes that are way too extreme like Erica's eye being cut by the shard of glass from the lightbulb and Noah’s lower jaw being broken from the car crash.
 * 22) "Bad Guy" performed by Billie Eilish did not fit very well with the credits, especially what happened in the end.

Good Qualities

 * 1) Elizabeth Banks leads an amazing performance.
 * 2) The score is awesome, although "Bad Guy" didn't fit well.
 * 3) The movie's premise is pretty interesting, even if the execution was poor.
 * 4) The death scenes are pretty creative, although it proves its cliche.
 * 5) Even if people were worried that Warner Bros./DC Comics will sue Sony Pictures Releasing, James Gunn at least reassured that he has good relationships with DC, which had entrusted him to direct the Suicide Squad and Superman's well-known background has been used in so many stories that it became a generic origin story route.

Reception
Brightburn was hyped up by many critics and audiences, but when it was released, it was not well-received, who felt that the film did not deliver on the full potential of its premise. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 58% based on 205 reviews, with an average rating of 5.7/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Although Brightburn doesn't fully deliver on the pitch-black promise of its setup, it's still enough to offer a diverting subversion of the superhero genre.". On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 44 out of 100, based on 31 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale, while those at PostTrak gave it 2.5 out of 5 stars and a "definite recommend" of 39%, while the film earned score of 6.1 on IMDb.

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