Firestarter (2022)

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To kick this one off, I should probably mention that my knowledge of Stephen King is still pretty green. Most of my exposure has been from films; many of which are apparently "bad" adaptations of his books. As far as his books go, I'm still just a noob, having polished off a grand total of two. 'Firestarter', however, is one King property that I haven't looked into in any way. Never read the book, and never saw the '84 Drew Barrymore movie. So you'll be getting a pretty honest review for this from yours truly as a big first-timer!

I enjoy the idea of this. It's that often overlooked concept of taking something like superpowers and giving it a horrific twist. The thing is, even if we look at his books, 'Carrie' predates this, and even King himself has admitted to wondering if 'Firestarter' was too much like 'Carrie'. Speaking for myself, I definitely see the similarities, and would personally claim 'Carrie' to be the better all-around horror story. But the differences between the two stories are enough that I think it's a "pick your poison" situation. 'Carrie' is a great tale of revenge and might make for better horror, but this is something much more along the lines of 'New Mutants' where it has more to do with how scary and dangerous it is to even have such power.

It all starts with a flashback to baby Charlene "Charlie" McGee spontaneously setting her bedroom on fire, essentially illustrating what we're dealing with here. Through the opening credits, we learn that Charlie's parents, Andy McGee (Zac Efron) and Vicky Tomlinson (Sydney Lemmon) were a part of an experiment in which they were injected with a drug known as Lot-6. This results in Andy gaining telepathy and Vicky gaining telekinesis. Of course, this, in turn, explains right away what baby Charlie is all about. We then come to the present day where we meet Charlie as an 11-year-old girl (​Ryan Kiera Armstrong) who is struggling in school.

As Charlie is getting bullied at school, she finds keeping her abilities hidden to be a constant struggle. Eventually, an incident at school does get the ball rolling, however, and we find ourselves in a very similar plot to 'Stranger Things' (and yes, it's confirmed the Duffer Bros. took inspiration from this story). In other words, this is generally about a bunch of bad people trying to get their hands on Charlie for their own personal weapon-making gain. Meanwhile, Andy and Vicky struggle to try to hide her from these people. So, perhaps my recent 'Stranger Things' binge also took a little something away from this. It also sort of suggests that this was a cash-in attempt on the studio's part, dropped right before Season 4 of 'Stranger Things' kicked off.

It's a hard task for me to review this one as any sort of comparison, as this has literally been my introduction to this story. However, just speaking objectively, I might suggest this to be mildly entertaining, but still kind of pointless. Of all of the Stephen King titles to relaunch at this point, I wouldn't have thought 'Firestarter' would be on the list of priorities. But being that I'm still a noob, I guess I really don't know what King fans are truly asking for out there. As it stands, it does still feel ill-timed - especially when we kind of know people will be clamouring for 'Stranger Things' a little harder. Hopefully the next attempt at a Stephen King redo will come out a little more thrilling.

3/5

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