Watching Bad Movies: Brightburn

I was worried, I was starting to enjoy every movie. D-List superhero films, and cowboy zombie films suddenly became acceptable for me. I thought, maybe I'm only watching films aimed directly at me. This is some kind of accident. Alas, I have found another terrible movie. Not even one that is so bad, it becomes good. I present Brightburn.

I heard about this movie a while back, I wasn't really interested. A lot of people were putting a lot of energy behind this as being the savior of superhero films. People compared it to Man of Steel with no slowing down in sight. I let the hype die down, but I had some free time this weekend. I decided to sit down and watch it.

The plot revolves around Clark Kent....Brandon Bryer. He was in a spaceship that crash landed on Earth in Brightburn Kansas. Tori and Kyle Bryer who could never have children raised him as their own child and things were great until he started puberty. A space ship hidden away under the barn began to call out to him. Eventually he translated the message as "take the world," and that's when things went south. He started creeping on girls at schools, when she called him a creep, he broke her hand. Then showed up later and promised to take care of her mother. So he killed her mom. Then he killed his uncle. Then he killed his dad. Then the sheriff and his mom. Then he went on to take over the world.

That may sound like I'm oversimplifying this plot. I'm not. This movie is an hour and a half long and the plot is couldn't fill a sheet of notebook paper. Most of this film is pointless horror movie filler shots of blinking lights, damaged scenery and scared white women. There are also dozens of scenes with Brandon just staring off into nowhere to up the creep factor. I can't say the soundtrack is exactly wonderful either.

A brief list of things I found stupid:

1. Why do the lights blink every time he uses his powers? 
2. We never actually see Brandon do anything, we only see him before and after.
3. Why did they show us a single bolt of the spaceship that was big as Brandon, then when we saw the actual ship it was the size of motorcycle sidecar.
4. Why are there so many scenes of just a shirtless teenage boy?
5. Taking shots at DC Comics heroes like they actually had a great movie
6. They want a sequel?
7. This isn't the first film in this universe.
8. That stupid "I'm a bad guy," song. I don't ever want to hear from that artist or producer again. 
9. When did Brandon ever find the time to make or purchase his little Scarecrow costume. Because that's what it was.
10. They kept trying to do the Cloverdale thing where "oh but you didn't see the monster how can you be sure it was him." We know.
11. Brightburn is his villain name, after a crappy little town in Kansas

I will give Brightburn credit for one thing. It made me realize I can still hate movies with a passion. This was a terrible movie. I can't blame the actors, they all gave everything they had for this film. But, Mark Gunn, Brian Gunn, James Gunn, Kenneth Huang and David Yarovesky should all be banned from anything to do with film making for... let's go with 900 weeks or 17 years and some change. I went with 900 because the film wasted 90 minutes of my time and I threw an extra zero on there for the score it deserves. 0/10 or 0/5 whichever works best for you. I don't rate movies on a scale. I just know this one was bad.

You can check out some of my fiction at 12 AM Fiction or follow my web serial Exsanguinate and of course hear me on the Powerbomb Jutsu podcast.
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