‘Firestarter’ Review

I have one major thought at this point, Stephen King writes X-Men better than the people who actually do write X-Men.

Firestarter is the story of a telekinetic, telepathic, tele-powerful little girl and her family who are on the run from the government, or a secret sector of it. After starting a Fire at school using her powers, the government is very much of their tracks.

The story is simple enough, try to evade and eventually fight the government due to supernatural powers, maybe when King wrote this story this was some sort of ground-breaking, I’m not old enough to know but now it certainly isn’t.

The Effects work is brutal with characters been very much as flammable and fragile as they would be in real life if not a little more, seeing charred living creatures never gets comfortable throughout the film and I winced more than once.

Zac Efron gives a decent performance as the kid’s father and the Ryan Kiera Armstrong does very well as a child actor. Both bring the right level of eeriness in their tones and power usage, and I enjoyed my time with the film. Saying that, I can’t say that I overly cared about either character or about the repercussions of the plot.

This film is a perfectly fine watch, neither great nor awful, 100% sound but not much else to speak of.

Like I said, my biggest takeaway is that X-Men style powers, work better when they are creepier, see ‘The New Mutants’ for a taste of what I mean, I think it’s the best that franchise has been for a long while.