Brightburn Review · 9:04pm May 28th, 2019

Saberking2012 - Well, it's been awhile and we've been slacking on reviews. That's partly my fault due to IRL stuff but hey, we got one now and another coming up soon.

GhoulDash97 - Which isn’t saying much, considering I had to carry the brunt of watching those movies. But hey. Who am I to turn down an enjoyable movie?

Saberking2012 - Oh, and be warned that this movie is VERY graphic. I'm not exaggerating when I say that either...

GhoulDash97 - It’s super intense and if you’re squeamish when it comes to the horror genre, I’d recommend leaving this review immediately.

Saberking2012 - Also, we're gonna do something a bit different here. We'll start with the plot, then move on to the praising and then move to the negative stuff(there's a lot of both).

GhoulDash97 - I'm Ghoul.

Saberking2012 - And I'm Saber.

GhoulDash97 - And this is our review of Brightburn(Heavy Spoilers ahead).

Saberking2012 - It starts off in the year 2006 with Tori and Kyle Breyer (Elizabeth Banks and David Denman respectfully) as a farm couple living in Brightburn(I see what they did there), Kansas. The two are trying to have a child, but have failed to conceive due to infertility issues. One night, a spaceship falls from the sky near their farm with a baby boy inside. Upon finding him, the couple decide to adopt him as their own, naming him Brandon.

GhoulDash97 - Twelve years later after a wonderful childhood, Brandon (played by Jackson A. Dunn) begins to notice he has an indiscernible amount of invulnerability and strength after he started hearing these alien voices in his head and destroying a blade to the lawnmower with his bare hands. On that same night when everyone one has gone off to bed, Brandon starts sleepwalking over to the barn and tries opening the door underneath him to get to the spaceship he was contained in while muttering this bizarre alien language. It took his mother to wake him up and come to his senses before he could discover his true identity.

Afterwards, Brandon begins to act unruly and defiant towards Tori and Kyle. To the latter’s shock, Brandon was bending a fork with his mouth, damaging it in the process. Kyle starts picking that something is off with Brandon. While she was cleaning Brandon’s room upstairs, she finds this strange and horrifying notebook underneath his bed, forcing Kyle to speak to Brandon about girls and puberty and-

Saberking2012 - (Please don't…)

GhoulDash97 - That same night, Brandon goes to Caitlyn, in her room, and eerily stares at her through her window curtains until she sees him, scaring her out of her wits in the process before he leaves. The next night, Brandon goes into the barn and slaughters every single chicken in its pen, much to Kyle’s horror. While Tori falsely it was wolves that attacked the chickens, Kyle starts insisting that Brandon is the culprit. The next morning at school during PE, the teacher has the students do a trust fall exercise, Brandon falls to the ground because Caitlyn refuses to touch the little creeper. She deems him a pervert for sneaking into her room; out of anger, Brandon breaks Caitlyn’s hand when she was forced to help him up and-

Saberking2012 - HOLD IT!

GhoulDash97 - (!?) What? What is it?

Saberking2012 - I was gonna save it until the end but I this is something I have to bring up.

GhoulDash97 - Hmm?

Saberking2012 - You remember that part of the trailer where he breaks her hand?

GhoulDash97 - ...I just said it. What about it?

Saberking2012 - Well, first off, the trailer suggested she was a part of the problem but as we later find out, not only is what happen(at best) hardly warranting her as the bad guy(girl) but originally, I disliked her for the reason I thought she was one of the bullies. Granted, I'd be freaked out too if some guy/girl did this to me but her reaction was(mostly) fair.

GhoulDash97 - Now that I think about it, the trailers, like Infinity War and Endgame, had these false spots where they make everything feel not what it seems to be, but to give us a false sense of misdirection and mystery to figure out what would happen next and whether or not we can take it all to heart to see if it actually happen.

Saberking2012 - Give Infinity War and Endgame credit(especially the former); they had a reason to lie about certain things (the infinity gauntlet, the Hulk, eta). Here, the trailer/s were (to an extent) false information since most of what happens occurs after he finds out his "parents" lied to him(with the exception of the hand breaking). And then there's Brandon himself and-

GhoulDash97 - Um, Saber, we should save that until after we get though the plot.

Saberking2012 - *Deep breath* Fair enough. Where were we?

GhoulDash97 - We are at the part where Brandon gets sent to the principal’s office and sent home on a two-day suspension.

Saberking2012 - Ah, right. Continue on.

GhoulDash97 - Later that night, Tori sees red glowing inside the barn and goes over to it, only to see Brandon levitating in the air and chanting that bizarre alien language, something related to this phrase take the world. His chanting is cut short by Tori’s arrival. Falling and cutting himself near the tip of his ship - so far, it appears to be his Kryptonite. Seeing what has happened before her, Tori finally confesses to Brandon that he was not from planet earth, but despite telling him that she still loved him and that he was a gift, Brandon leaves the farm in anger and fires his laser eyes to vent himself of his frustrations. Brandon heads back to Caitlyn’s house and visits her in her room, who told the former that her mother has forbidden her from speaking to him. Hearing this, Brandon flies over to the diner she works at and kills her.

Saberking2012 - (Witch was spoiled in the trailers and nothing new to add…)

GhoulDash97 - After a counseling session at school, Merilee grows worried because of Brandon’s growing sociopathy and tell Brandon that she has to report this to the police. Appearing at her home unannounced, Brandon tries to intimidate her into keeping what she learned about him from the police. Her husband, Noah (played by Matt Jones, the same guy who played Badger from Breaking Bad) finds Brandon in their closet and tries taking him back to his parent’s house. Donning his mask once again, he attacks Noah. The latter was killed when the former dropped his truck from the sky, getting lower jaw split by the steering wheel in the process.

Saberking2012 -To say he was killed would be putting it kindly. Heck, its arguably the most brutal death in the entire movie(witch is saying a lot considering the other deaths and that… dinner scene).

GhoulDash97 - Is that really saying much though? This movie is pretty much Superman if he decided to take the Injustice route. I think we can assume this is pretty much the PG scene for what will be coming pretty soon.

Saberking2012 - Anywho, Tori and Kyle hear about Noah’s demise and tell Brandon about this, only to be utterly shocked when Brandon does not react emotionally to the man’s death. Violently grabbing Brandon by his arm and accusing him of lying to his face, Brandon angrily pushes Kyle through the kitchen wall and walks up to his room. Kyle tries explaining that Brandon must’ve killed Noah, but Tori finds little belief that Brandon would be capable of such feats, causing a rift in their relationship.

That night when it was time for bed, Kyle tells Tori that he plans on going for a hunting trip with his son to prove to her that he loves him under ruse that he plans on executing him. In the isolated woods, Kyle fires a shot at Brandon’s head, only for it to horrifically bounce off and the former begins stalking the latter. Fueled by rage for his father’s betrayal, Brandon burns through Kyle’s eyes by using his laser vision, killing him in an instant.

GhoulDash97 - And you say I'm blunt.

Saberking2012 - Shut it. Moving on, Tori is visited by the sheriff, who shows her a symbol found at both the diner and Noah's accident scene (two back to back Bs, which Tori had seen Brandon doodling in a notebook. Not gonna lie, I didn't even think about that on first viewing. And before anyone asks, yes, I saw this more than once). After having the sheriff leave her property, Tori searches through Brandon’s room and notices his notebook, containing the various double Bs inside it. Having finally caught a grasp of Brandon’s depravity and knowing full well of what he is capable of now, Tori, in a panic, reaches for her phone and tries calling Kyle, only to hear Brandon’s voice and telling her that he is dead.

GhoulDash97 - Returning home, Brandon begins demolishing the house with Tori still inside. She was able to get a phone call for the local sheriff. Brandon reduced one to ground beef while he broke the other’s skull like it was a watermelon before proceeding to search for Tori. Managing to escape through a broken window despite her injuries, Tori limps her way over to the barn in order to grab a shard off of Brandon’s ship and use it as a shiv against him.

Tori was able to get Brandon to come to her via a whistle tune she used earlier in the film, confident that he is normal and still loves her. Tori tells Brandon that she knows there is still good in him. Holding him in her embrace, Tori tries to mercy-kill Brandon, but horrifically fails when he catches onto her treacherous scheme. Angered by her betray and out of spite, Brandon lifts her up into the lower atmosphere and drops her to her death before destroying a plane full of innocent passengers with his powers, killing everybody onboard the aircraft.

In a post-credit scene while Brandon was destroying Brightburn, Kansas, a conspiracy theorist vlogger known as The Big T (played by Michael Rooker, well known for playing Merle Dixon and Yondu) reports recent sighting of a half-man, half-sea creature capsizing ships in the South China Sea and a Witch Woman choking people out with ropes and cords, telling the truth and urging everybody on the web to do something about these malevolent, supernatural beings, including Brandon who is now known as Brightburn to the media, including all the other new beings who are out there on Earth.

Saberking2012 - Okay, now that we've got the plot out of the way, let's talk about everything else. First off, I just wanna say that going in, I was halfway expecting a slight PG 13 shenanigans but (un)surprisingly, it went though its gore(something the Slenderman was botched… I'll get to that heap of trash later…) but I can't stress enough how ballsy, yet absolutely brilliant it is to show a different trajectory of the Man of Steel’s pop culture-ubiquitous backstory.

GhoulDash97 - No kidding. Gunn is clearly the mastermind here, a happily-testified superhero fanatic who obviously did his homework. The man worked on Guardians of the Galaxy and before that, he worked on these indie movies called Super and Slither. One was a superhero movie and the other was a B-Horror movie. He clearly wanted in on this project after being casted out of Disney for his pedophilia jokes and before he was rehired to work on Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3. He was in a league of his own when he became the producer of this movie. You could feel Superman all over it. But Brandon Breyer is no Clark Kent. He is hellbent on world domination and will not stop until he takes it or destroys it. I don’t think that even the Avengers could stop him.

Saberking2012 - And the death scenes… oh lord, where do we even begin…? If there's one thing I can say was borderline perfect, it's the graphic nature of it. It doesn't shy away at all. It makes The Predator look like a Pixar movie.

GhoulDash97 - Right?! The high amount of gore that was displayed wasn’t held back in the slightest. I was particularly horrified during the diner scene where Caitlyn’s mother pulled a shard of glass out of her left eye. It would be enough to make my skin crawl if it weren’t for the other deaths that occured like Noah’s death or Kyle’s death or the Sheriff’s demise. But what happened to Tori was extremely kind compared to what happened to the others.

Saberking2012 - As I said previously, the scene with Noah is arguably the most brutal death I've seen in quite some time. And this coming from the same guy who loves watching horror films.

GhoulDash97 - I’ve seen lots of Stephen King adaptation movies, but none of them could prepare me for everything that would occur in this film. If I was ever introduced to Brandon Breyer, I would immediately shake my hand and just keep away. That’s how creepy the kid is and Jackson did a helluva good job with him.

Saberking2012 - With the praise all said and done, the movie isn't flawless however. First(and most importantly), the story felt insanely rushed and sloppily written(while also somehow being incredibly slowly paced) and for a 90 minute movie, that's sure as heck not a good thing. Give Endgame credit; at least when they were slow, it was for the story. Not only are some parts completely unimportant to the movie, but Brandon himself is completely bland as a character. Say what you will about Superman, but at least he had a reason for his actions. Brandon went from being nice to evil in a snap of a finger(pardon my pun) with almost no convincing whatsoever. And that's ignoring the half hearted attempt at redemption towards the end.

GhoulDash97 - Personally, I didn’t think Brandon was bland. Sure he had a few moments that would help put you to sleep, but he did have some establishing moments and he did do a good job of holding this movie along with the other actors. But this story that movie had going for it? If you gave me the script as a writer, I assure that I could do a helluva lot better with it. And it was none of the actors’ fault for this blunder. The script just went from zero to one hundred in Thanos’ snap and it felt all too rushed. But in retrospect, the movie did provide me with an enjoyable watch and I was totally immersed in the story. The fact that it’s even going for a cinematic universe makes it all the more satisfying as I hope to see more from these new malevolent beings that appeared in the post-credit scene.

Saberking2012 - With that said, I'm still giving this movie a good 8/10. The gore and violence was great but somewhat ruined since about most of them were shown in the trailers but with the MC(Brandon) being bland, the story being almost nonexistent at some points and with the trailers(somewhat) lying to you, I can't in good faith make it higher. However, because its setting up a cinematic universe(something I'm happy about) and with a sequel in production(or so I've heard), I'm willing to forgive some of the issues(witch is why it's not a 7/10 btw).

GhoulDash97 - I give this movie an 8/10 as well. I thought that the actors did a pretty good job carrying this movie and the fatality rate was pretty high up along with the gore. I do, however, wish that they fleshed out the characters more and I wanted to see the plot hole get filled. Hopefully, we’ll get a director’s cut and we will get to see more of these terrifying new characters in this new cinematic universe (hopefully, it won’t be like early DCEU).

Saberking2012 - And I know some of you requested Detective Pikachu(and that is coming out) but that's gonna take some more time since Spiderman Far From Home is coming out and we will be reviewing that. With that said, thanks for having me on here Ghoul And I'll see you around.

GhoulDash97 - But next month, we will be seeing Dark Phoenix and we will be watching Spider-Man: Far From Home come July. We will be reviewing Detective Pikachu, but we must ask for your patience and I hope that you will enjoy our stories and reviews. This is GhoulDash97 and I’ll see you on the other side.

Saberking2012's page

Report GhoulDash97 · 233 views ·

Comments ( 13 )

Viewing 1 - 50 of 13
- Newest First
- Oldest First

SuperGodzilla2030

SuperGodzilla2030 #1 · May 28th, 2019 · 1 · ·

Good review on this and... this Saturday, I am planning on seeing Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019). I am more hyped for that movie than... Avengers: Endgame! And please, don't tell me anything about Avengers: Endgame, I want to see it blind.

GhoulDash97