FIRESTARTER

CONTAINS SOME SPOILERS AND A QUESTION

Here's the question: is this a remake of the 1984 film, or a new adaptation of the Stephen King novel? Presumably the makers would claim it as the latter, seeking to disassociate this shiny new Blumhouse incarnation from the original's flaws and claiming that this time they were doing it right, but the incorporation of a retro-style synth score (co-composed by John Carpenter, who was all set to direct that original before the box-office failure of The Thing) rather than the preferred atonal dischords and Boo! stingers of so many modern horror movie soundtracks would suggest otherwise. They even use a near-identical typeface for the credits and run them at the start, again in contrast to the modern manner.

I've never read the book and never will, so I couldn't say which is closer to King and I don't think it matters anyway as I'd sooner take the film on its own terms rather than fidelity to the original text, which I don't regard as Holy Writ. The basic line of the new Firestarter is still the same as the old: Charlie McGee (Ryan Kiera Armstrong in the Drew Barrymore role), a young girl with pyrokinetic powers, along with her telepathic father (Zac Efron), is being tracked by sinister definitely-not Government agents seeking to either exploit her powers for evil military purposes or at least teach her to control them so she doesn't set off a nuclear apocalypse with the power of her mind. Inevitably things don't work out for them, leading to the expected climactic fiery carnage and a muted and unexpected resolution that frankly makes no character sense....

About a third of the way through, one word is spoken which actually redefines what the film is. The original Firestarter has always been classed as horror, albeit a respectable one from a respectable source, which star names like Martin Sheen and George C Scott wouldn't be ashamed of appearing in. (It's also a close cousin of Brian De Palma's The Fury.) The word is "superhero", this is actually an X-Men movie and she should have been taken in by Dr Xavier's School For Gifted Youngsters rather than Bastards Incorporated. It's ironic that this new Firestarter appears unheralded in cinemas one week after Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness, because it literally feels like Patrick Stewart wheeled himself onto the wrong set.

On its own terms as a popcorn B-movie, it's watchable enough: enough people get set on fire to keep it entertaining and it's short and to the point (twenty minutes shorter than the 1984 version). And either CGI fire has improved drastically in the last few years or they've gone back to the old method of showing people on fire by simply...setting people on fire. But if you do want to play comparison, then the 1984 version, perfect though it certainly isn't, has it. Firestarter 2022 is somehow unremarkable, somehow not very interesting: there's just not enough there. It feels like they've exercised too much control and they can't, or won't, do what you, me and Charlie McGee really want, which is to finally let rip with the firepower and burn it all. Instead this one can be blown out in a light breeze.

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