Warning: Spoilers ahead for Firestarter (2022).
Firestarter is the latest Stephen King novel to get re-adapted for a modern moviegoing audience. Nearly four decades after the 1984 version that launched Drew Barrymore’s career, the team behind the Halloween reboot has cooked up a new adaptation starring Ryan Kiera Armstrong as Charlie and Zac Efron as Andy.
While there are some saving graces that make the new Firestarter watchable – Armstrong’s performance as the titular pyrokinetic kid being one of them – as a whole, the 2022 movie is a misconceived, largely forgettable affair.
Things That Didn’t Work
Lack Of Scares
For a horror movie – and one adapted from the “King of Horror,” no less – 2022’s Firestarter isn’t very scary. There’s a big jump in the opening scene with a baby bursting into flames and there’s a palpable flinch when a cop is shot in the head around the midpoint, but that’s about it.
There’s a lot of gruesome imagery of fresh burns left in the wake of Charlie’s torchings, but that’s more stomach-churning than scary. There are more genuine frights in Marvel Studios’ latest superhero epic than the Firestarter reboot. Audiences looking for cinematic thrills this weekend should just watch Doctor Strange 2 again.
Setups With No Payoffs
The basic rule of thumb in screenwriting is that everything set up in the first act has to be paid off by the third act, or there was no point of having it in there. There’s a specific setup in the first act of Firestarter that goes nowhere.
Charlie is relentlessly tormented by a bully at school and comes close to eviscerating him with her powers a couple of times. After being introduced to such a hateable bully character, audiences deserved to see Charlie’s revenge – especially since there’s a scene with bullies later on and the script introduces three new bullies instead of bringing back the already-established bully.
Skimming Over The Emotional Substance
The emotional substance of this story is a father and daughter hitting the road. They’re on the run from a shady government agency that wants to kill the father and experiment on the daughter, all while they’re grieving the recent horrific passing of the mother.
But the movie skims over that. The mother’s death is mentioned once during an impromptu funeral for a burnt cat. The rest of the movie treats Charlie’s grapple with pyrokinesis as a superhero origin story (the big bad even calls her “a real-life superhero”).
The “Pants On Fire” Moment
One of the more unwatchable moments in 2022’s Firestarter was teased in the trailer. As she confronts a government employee who tried to deceive her, Charlie quips, “Liar, liar, pants on fire,” before burning her to a crisp.
This is the big climactic moment in the final massacre. The “pants on fire” one-liner is supposed to be badass, but it just comes off as cringeworthy.
The Villain Never Poses A Real Threat
The King canon has produced some of the most memorable villains in movie history, from Pennywise to Annie Wilkes to Shawshank’s Byron Hadley. Firestarter has a great concept for a villain – a superpowered black-ops assassin who’s reactivated to hunt down a similarly superpowered child and kill her – but John Rainbird never seems to pose a real threat.
He’s introduced as a ruthless, unstoppable bounty killer, but whenever he shows up, all Charlie has to do is scream and conjure up a fireball to get rid of him.
The Messy Final Battle
The last half-hour of Firestarter sees Charlie infiltrating the underground facility housing her father and scorches whoever stands between her and Andy’s cell. This sequence is set up as a riveting final battle in which Charlie takes control of her powers and the bad guys get what’s coming to them.
There are a couple of predictable twists that make no difference to the outcome of the story and Charlie’s fiery massacre marks the moment that 2022’s Firestarter devolves into an incoherent mess.
Zac Efron’s Melodramatic Performance
Zac Efron is a talented, versatile actor who’s shown off his ability to handle everything from the goofiest of comedies to the sappiest of dramas, but his performance in Firestarter doesn’t gel with the tone of the movie.
The script reads like a C-tier Tales from the Crypt episode, but Efron plays each scene like it’s a cerebral, heartfelt, Paper Moon-style father-daughter drama.
Things That Worked
Ryan Kiera Armstrong’s Powerful Turn As Charlie
Movies with a child actor in the lead role tend to be hit-and-miss. It’s tough for child actors to develop their talent at such a young age, and if they land a starring role, they need an innate gift for carrying a movie. Fortunately, Firestarter’s Ryan Kiera Armstrong has it.
She steals every scene from Efron and brings more depth to Charlie’s struggle to control her anger through body language and facial expressions than anything in the script’s on-the-nose dialogue.
John Carpenter’s Score
While the action on-screen isn’t particularly exciting in the Firestarter reboot, it’s helped by a spectacular musical score. The score was composed by horror movie legend John Carpenter in conjunction with his son Cody Carpenter and collaborator Daniel Davies.
It’s a quintessential horror score, with delightfully unnerving synthesizers harking back to Carpenter’s hugely influential music from the Halloween franchise.