Brightburn

What if Superman was a supervillain instead of a superhero? The idea itself is genius, and kudos to the Gunn Brothers for officially implementing it on film.

Brightburn is a terrifying motion picture in the truest sense of the adjective. Brandon Breyers (Jackson A. Dunn) is Brightburn, the most vicious predator living among us. Little did the parents know about this in the beginning, and the gradual process of discovering his powers, super strength, super intelligence and evil nature was intriguing! Brandon snapping his colleague's hand, murdering said colleague's mother and his uncle were fascinating sequences. The makers could have definitely deleted the totally unneeded, forced-in gore that didn't jive with the film's nature. Broken jaw and glass-pierced eyeballs were off-limits! Also, there were too many ineffective jump-scares.

Primary force of this narrative came from normal human beings going against an invincible antagonist, only to fail miserable at it as they should! Elizabeth Banks and David Denman gave good performances and had great chemistry as the parents. Them trying to teach their son about sex, figuring out his lies plus hide-and-seek whistle callback were well-written. Brandon dropping his mother from the top of the sky was beautiful, scary and poetic at the same time.

The script sped through a major portion of the setup. Significant time should have been spent developing Brandon's before snapshot to show there's an arc achieved at the end. The setup would have also deepened the relationship between Brandon and his parents, feeding us not only a tragic, but extremely heartbreaking finale. Furthermore, the writing lacked subtext in terms of dialogues, character descriptions and scene suggestions here and there.

From the end credits, it's clear that the Gunn Brothers have an idea to create their own universe of supervillains. One can't wait to see what's coming next out of it!