Bad Superboy

“What if Superman is evil?”  That is the unholy premise proposed in the surprisingly gruesome superhero-horror movie ‘Brightburn’ from director/producer James Gunn (‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ 1 & 2).  While many will undoubtedly find the very notion that Superman, the tireless do-gooder who fights for “Truth, Justice and the American Way,” can be an evil villain to be revolting and inconceivable, this latest subversion of one of our most basic assumptions is but the latest variation of what we’ve seen in other anti-hero treatments such as M. Night Shyamalan’s ‘Unbreakable’/’Glass’ and the NBC genre series ‘Heroes.’

 

The story of ‘Brightburn’ is eerily similar to that of Superman.  A meteor crashed outside a farmhouse in Smallville, I mean Brightburn, Kansas in which Tori (Elizabeth Banks) and Kyle (David Denman) Breyer found a baby, whom they regarded as a godsend (or rather demonsend in this case) as they failed to conceive earlier and promptly named Brandon (Jackson Dunn).  Brandon grew and turned out to be a particularly gifted boy, not only smart but possesses heat vision, superhuman strength and can levitate off the ground.  Like the Kents, the Breyers were not disturbed at all by their “special” and precious boy.  Unlike the Kents, their parenting skills were sadly deficient in guiding Brandon on the straight-and-narrow path to their great detriment.

 

‘Brightburn’ is not for the weak of stomach.  This unabashedly R-rated gorefest has scenes that even made me squirm a little, including one in which a poor woman pulled a shard of glass impaled in her eye (and seeing through it afterwards in a reddish haze) and a man who literally had to hold his ripped-apart jaw together.  Overall, I like it for the very reason that it subverts our expectations and challenges us to see super-powered beings in a different and less idealistic light.  ‘Brightburn’ actually brings to mind another movie I enjoyed several years ago, ‘Chronicle,’ which tells a similar (albeit less bloody PG-13) story through the prism of adolescent angst.

Grade: A-