Brightburn: Supervillain Slashing
So, what if Superman decided humanity was inferior and needed to be eliminated? That basically sums up the storyline of Brightburn, which explores Brandon Breyer’s discovery of his superpowers. Brightburn is a decent movie that has some good gore and a standout performance, while providing an interesting enough origin story for a larger universe.
Even though the premise is about the making of a supervillain, the movie does tend to play out like a standard slasher film. One good thing about this is the gore in the film stands out and has moments that can make even the most hardened fan consider looking away. It is also nice to see effects that don’t depend on CGI. However, the problem with the way the story is set up is that it comes off as very formulaic and is a very predictable movie. Honestly, if you have seen the trailers then you can guess the plot almost entirely. One other aspect that I did enjoy was that Brandon was just a full out psychopath with very little need for explaining it. I originally figured they were going to go the route of him being heavily bullied as an explanation for why he is evil, but luckily, they mostly stayed away from that. That seems to have become the normal way of explaining why someone does bad things and it is starting to become a tiring trope.
The main thing that holds this film together is Elizabeth Bank’s performance as Brandon’s mother Tori. Banks tends to bring a great performance into anything I see her in, and that holds true in Brightburn. She puts her all into making the mother a character the audience can sympathize with. She does a great job making her character’s decision-making work. I feel like a lesser performance would’ve made the mother’s defense of Brandon come off as incredibly stupid and eye-rolling, yet Banks manages to make it work and is the glue that keeps this movie together.
Looking at this as an origin film, it does face the same problem that a lot of those style of films face. It comes off as generic and does feel like every story beat is done in a paint-by-numbers fashion. Another problem I have is that once again, this is a film where the ending of the movie is in the trailer, which is a trend that just needs to die already. One thing I did enjoy is that the after-credits did hint towards a potential larger universe that could introduce other supervillains. This could be a fun universe that could lead to some entertaining movies in the future if that were to occur. As a kickstart to the story though, Brightburn does a decent enough job being an entertaining enough movie that is certainly worth watching when you got extra time and can catch a cheaper showing.
3 / 5
