Movie Review: Firestarter (2022)

This is a poorly executed movie that isn’t worth your time. If you watched this movie in theaters, I hope you received a refund. Firestarter is boring; there is nothing interesting about this movie. Firestarter is a poorly executed horror thriller without any suspense or urgency. The plot is predictable and lazy, and the acting isn’t good enough to make this movie work. I don’t know how it compares to the original, but the original can’t be worse than whatever this is.

There is a lot of build-up in this movie that leads nowhere, yet there isn’t enough worldbuilding to flesh out its universe. I can’t tell you how the powers work or what the difference between each is; all I know is that people will awkwardly stare at each other and special effects wash over everything. It would help if they explanation or guidance so I could care about what is going on, but instead, there is only incompetence.

There is no suspense in this movie. The villains in this movie are negligible at best. They are guided by generic motivations and only seem to appear when the writing hits a wall. When they do show up, they are blown away almost instantly. It is extremely anticlimactic. It would be nice if it felt like Charlie and her family were being pursued by a competent force. It would help make things interesting if the fights were fun. This movie does a great job at making super-powered fights boring. I don’t even want to get into how problematic Rainbird is, but I am deeply offended. 

There are other movies that tackle this story more effectively, seek those out instead. This movie doesn’t deserve your time. But if you don’t believe me, you can watch it over on Peacock.