Firestarter (Keith Thomas, 2022)

Spoiler Free Review

This version of Firestarter is flat, bland and without much of what made the source material, Stephen King's ninth novel, worthy of the time it takes to read it. Firestarter as a novel, was an emotionally resonant piece of horror/science fiction. The narrative concerning a father/daughter relationship while they're being pursued by what seems to be an all powerful government agency has some sharp emotional observations, as well as some sharp observances about the aims and abuses of power. A film adaptation doesn't have to be the same as its  source material. In fact, it often requires some major changes to make the same basic story work on film. The changes here aren't the direct source of the problem. The source of the problem is the lack of interest in putting any of those things front and center, and instead believing a focus on the spectacle of the psychic abilities would be enough. It's not. The basic problem is lack of focus on character development and spending enough time with the relationships between the characters. What we end up with, is a very run of the mill science fiction/action film, without any resonance. It feels like a standard TV movie, with one or two sequences which might prevent it from appearing on broadcast TV. Overall, it fails in the way which is worst for genre fare. It's boring. It's worth noting director Keith Thomas can only be held responsible to a small degree. This is a Blumhouse problem. The production company which developed the script, hired Thomas and then makes basic decisions about things like run time and budget, is the problem here. Firestarter as a two hour or two and a half hour movie, can work. As a ninety minute film, it becomes an exercise in hitting plot beats at the right points on the schedule necessary to be able to meet the run time. There are some changes to the source material in this adaptation which could have produced something interesting. Thomas knows how to shoot what he's working with in a way which is competent, and in a few instances, interesting. Having seen his other feature, The Vigil, it's impossible to ignore that Thomas is a very talented director. What made that feature so compelling and so deeply creepy and frightening, is the way emotional resonance is weaved through it. There is none of it in this script for him to work with. It's also clear the budget is an issue, as it prevents Thomas from being able to present the powers of the Firestarter of the film with the kind of scope necessary to create the spectacle which is necessary not just to the story overall, but particularly when the decision has been made to rely on spectacle instead of character and story. This script, at this budget, was basically doomed to fail, and that's on Blumhouse. Keith Thomas will unfortunately be saddled with more of the responsibility than he deserves for the boring, empty exercise we've gotten. 

In Depth Review Containing Spoilers for Firestarter 2022 and the Stephen King novel

Stephen King may be the most influential figure in 20th century horror. It might seem hyperbolic to say this, but when we consider that he's sold 350 million books, and 86 film adaptations, it's hard to quantify just how deeply that influence goes. Also, it's only recently King has begun to start to get some recognition from the world of "serious literature," the gatekeepers who've been creating the understanding of whether or not a novel or piece of writing qualified as art. For most of his career, King was considered too low brow and too pulpy to be considered someone who has written literature. At this point, his success, and the length of time his work has exercised this  level of influence has become one of the examples of someone essentially forcing the door to recognition open, by threatening the continued legitimacy of the institutions responsible for bestowing legitimacy. If King's work wasn't communicating something as nearly universal as art is capable of, and not doing so in a substantial way, what would explain his popularity, and the fact that we're still returning to those stories so often, not to mention the depth of dedication in his fanbase. 

Now, we have Firestarter, a new film adaptation of his ninth novel. It's the second adaptation. The first adaptation was in 1984, and ended up being directed by Mark L. Lester. When it was initially set up and announced, horror maestro John Carpenter was attached to direct. Unfortunately, after the box office failure of Carpenter's The Thing, he was removed from the project. The Thing has since gained a reputation to one of the great horror films of its generation, and is often in conversation as one of the great horror films of all time. We will never know what the director of Halloween, The Thing, Escape from New York and They Live  would have been able to bring out of the material, but it's not at all hard to believe that in the middle of the period when he arguably produced his best work, it would have been far better than the 1984 version of the film. Though it starred George C. Scott, a very young Drew Barrymore, Martin Sheen, Art Carney and Louise Fletcher, it's not a very successful film. It feels scattered, and though it has a few sequences which are impressive for their time, it doesn't produce anything like a significant emotional response. It feels almost distracted, like it wasn't completely sure what it's central ideas were, and doesn't feel at all substantial. 

When it was announced there was going to be another adaptation, it seemed like an opportunity to take the source material and bring what made it work to the screen. The story is centered on the father/daughter pair Andy and Charlie McGee. In the book, Andy and the woman who would become his wife, Vicky, volunteered for what they thought was an FDA approved drug trial. Instead, what they'd signed up for was experiment done by a shadowy government entity called The Shop, in the hope to using a drug in the to release latent psychic powers. For the most part, it fails. Most of the test subjects die. It does produce a few subjects who develop psychic powers though. Andy develops the ability to "push" people. It's basically the ability to use psychic projection to influence other people. Andy is able to "push" people to do things, and to see things he wants them to. Vicky develops minor telekinetic abilities. Both Andy and Vicky attempt to hide their new abilities, and after falling meeting at the experiment and falling in love after, they essentially try to drop out and disappear. When they have a child, Charlie, it becomes clear very quickly, this child has terrifyingly powerful pyrokinetic abilities (the ability to control fire with ones mind). This is all told through backstory and flashbacks in the book. When the book begins, Charlie and Andy are on the run, trying to hide from agents of The Shop, and Vicky is dead. The majority of the book involves their attempts to allude The Shop, being captured, their time at a Shop facility, and Charlie's eventual revolt and escape. It's not King's best novel, but it is a very good novel. 

What we get in this new adaptation of Firestarter is an attempt to hit what the producers and writers must have felt were all the most important plot beats of the book, without any of necessary work put into insuring the character relationships have the emotional resonance necessary to make the story work overall. It feels hollow. As the spoiler free review above says, this is a film that chooses spectacle as the vehicle for producing some kind of emotional response in the viewer/audience. The film also undercuts itself by changing some of the elements of the source material which give it the best opportunity for these things. It's clear one reason these decisions were made was to meet a pre-decided runtime of roughly ninety minutes. 

One of the most successful things about the story of Firestarter is the journey Charlie experiences with her with her powers. Though The Shop is the villain or antagonist of the novel, they are not the only source of horror or fear in the novel. One of the other sources of horror is Charlie, her lack of control over her powers and the scope of those powers. One of the most important scenes for demonstrating this is a confrontation between Charlie, Andy and agents of The Shop at the home of someone who has unwittingly given aid to them. In the book, it takes place at the home of an elderly couple, and Charlie's defense of her father and these strangers is the first time we become truly aware of how little we've seen of her abilities, and that the use of this power produces something like a trance state in her. The way she talks about it is akin to something else taking over. She decimates local police and Shop agents in horrifying ways. It also becomes clear she gets something like relief from it. The release from the level of control she has to expend in order exercise her power is enjoyable for her. This is all in the context of the fact that she is a child, under extreme stress, tension and the attendant emotional pressures which come with those. Though there is something triumphant in the ending of the novel, there's also a sense of unease to some degree. Yes, Charlie has been a prisoner. She has been subjected to what's basically a kind of human experimentation in being forced to use her power in order for The Shop to study them. Yet, when we're confronted with what we come to understand isn't even the full extent of her power, there's an unease that this being, this child with an unimaginable level of power has been released into the world. Charlie is terrifying. It is the ending the reader is hoping for and expecting, but it's also more complicated than this variety of ending usually is. 

By choosing spectacle and plot above the investment in character and their relationships, it means the level of spectacle has to be significant. Unfortunately, it's clear the budget necessary to produce a spectacle of that scope isn't there. There's not enough here to sell the scope of Charlie's power to make it as impactful as it would have to be. It's also clear the writers didn't fully understand how the slow reveal of the growth of Charlie's powers works in giving the narrative in the novel power, as well as the sense of threat which comes from struggle to control them. What we end up with, instead of an interesting, intense story, hinging on a character who is obviously a child attempting to control an amount of power no one in their right mind would ever give a child, is something more along the lines of a very standard super hero origin story, without the fun. 

There's also something like an emotional incoherence to the script. The first fifteen minutes of the film are concerned with Charlie's inability to control her powers. She has an episode at school which terrifies a teacher, nearly injuring her, and which to any rational mind would have seemed like detonating an explosive of some kind. She mistakenly burns her mother, when she was attempting burn her father. An hour or two later, when Andy and Charlie return to their home, having gone to give her mother some time to calm down after her child just set her arms on fire, they walk in to find a stranger (Rainbird) and then discover the body of Charlie's mother. Now, that afternoon, Charlie had been able to keep her powers under control when another child was bullying her. Her fear about what was going to happen since they were going to have to run, drove her to trying to burn her father alive. Now two hours later, during the discovery of her mother's body, and she's able to control those powers? We also see that in this version, Charlie has inherited her parents powers to some degree. She has some level of telekinesis, the "push" and something like a psychic link to other people with these powers. This doesn't make any sense in comparison to what we've been shown up to that point. It also doesn't make sense with what comes later. 

The character of Rainbird has been significantly changed in this adaptation, which isn't a problem by itself. The problem, again, is there isn't enough development of the character. We've seen Charlie discover Rainbird at her home, just after killing her mother and her mother's body. She sees Rainbird take her father, knowing he's being taken to this version of The Shop. After Charlie has burned her way through everyone who was attempting to stop her from getting out of the this version of The Shop, called DSI, she's confronted by men in burn proof equipment. The burn proof equipment, of course, renders them safe from her pyrokenisis, but just a few minutes before, we'd seen her use telekinesis. She doesn't use her telekinesis in an attempt to deal with them. There's a sprinkler going off, and she's on her knees, and it's Rainbird who "saves" her. We've gotten a slight suggestion Rainbird has some sense of affection or attraction to Charlie because of her abilities, but Charlie has just burned through a dozen or so people, and she's faced with the man who killed her mother and is somewhat responsible for her father's death, because Rainbird brought him to DSI, let's him live. Maybe she does this because he prevents her from being captured, and maybe she recognizes that. But, when she stumbles down to the beach, after blowing her way out of DSI, Charlie takes his hand and allows him to carry her off. 

The script doesn't sell this. It doesn't give us any reason to believe this is a choice Charlie would make. Is it because Rainbird is the only person in the world who knows who she is, what she can do, what she is? It's possible, but there's no indication in the script as to what the answer is. It's a serious let down as an ending. 

With another thirty to forty-five minutes, there would have been enough time to develop these characters and their relationships in a way to give the film some substance and impact. The story exists. There are examples, some of which would have needed to be updated, but the details of how to make this work are there. The story works, we know that. What it takes to make it work on film is certainly different, and this version does come up with some interesting changes to the plot (the changes to Rainbird's story most specifically), but it just utterly fails because it feels flat and insubstantial. Hopefully, Keith Thomas gets a better opportunity in his next project. 

Firestarter is in theaters now, and streaming on Peacock.