Brightburn: Son of Darkness (Brightburn)
U.S.A. 2019

Opening 20 Jun 2019

Directed by: David Yarovesky
Writing credits: Brian Gunn, Mark Gunn
Principal actors: Elizabeth Banks, David Denman, Jackson A. Dunn, Abraham Clinkscales, Christian Finlayson

Tori Breyer (Elizabeth Banks) and Kyle Breyer (David Denman) desperately want a child, so when an alien spaceship hits the earth with a small baby inside it, they decide to pretend to adopt it. From the beginning, the film gushes with sci-fi- horror vibes; still we want to believe that Brandon Breyer (Jackson A. Dunn) is a take-off of Clark Kent and will grow up as Superman and save the Earth. Tension builds as we see the worried looks on both Brandon’s parents and that the barn at night has an eerie red glow to it which seems to be controlling Brandon in his sleep. His parents do their best to protect him and soon find themselves in denial that they are living with an anti-super hero and don’t quite know who to turn to for help.

David Yarovesky, director of the Guardians of the Galaxy: Inferno music video, decided to play around with the perspective of the protagonist. It is a clever and perfectly enjoyable B-film, since he clearly needed more money to bring the sets up to a more sophisticated level, but maybe not. It feels like another radical cult film in the making. It does remind me a bit of Venom, which gives us the opportunity of looking deep into the psyche of the bad guy. The sound track from Timothy Williams keeps our nerves off-centre so we can never relax, making the film altogether very entertaining. (Shelly Schoeneshoefer)