Firestarter

Drew Barrymore had just done "E.T." when they planted her in front of a wind machine for "Firestarter," probably the most memorable visual of that 1984 ...

Horror never goes out of style, and thanks in part to the aforementioned "It," everything old with King's imprimatur is either new again or likely soon will be. But honestly, not much happens for a fairly long stretch of the film's modest 90-some-odd minutes, until the bad guys finally locate them again, leading to the inevitable showdown. Simultaneously hitting theaters and the streaming service Peacock feels about right, since this is the sort of movie that would have gone directly to cable TV a few decades ago.

Before you take a trip down to the local cinema, though, check out the general consensus we've pulled together below. zac efron, ryan kiera armstrong, ...

It won't change the reputation of remakes, but can be remembered as an example of when they go right." A promising beginning comes unraveled by the desire to burn it all down." It's a lesson that Blumhouse, which is planning a remake of another lesser King adaptation, Christine, should take to heart."

Zac Efron and Ryan Kiera Armstrong star in this new adaptation of Stephen King's 1980 novel about a preteen girl with pyrokinetic powers made even more ...

Ryan Kiera Armstrong takes on the role of Charlie, who is a bit of an introvert and a social outcast in her school. She’s not allowed to have a phone or the Internet, and she’s been told by her father to simply repress her scary fire-starting powers. Based on how pristine her inexplicably barrel-curled hair looks for most of the film, though, it seems that those in charge might have been more concerned with the aesthetics than the performance. Why anyone would want to resurrect this particular property is a bit of a mystery, beyond the fact that some might have a misplaced fondness for it because they saw it at an impressionable age. No, this outing is a dull slog, even with its cool, synthy John Carpenter score and the should’ve-been-inspired decision to cast Zac Efron as the father of the flame-throwing preteen. Roger Ebert wrote that its “crucial flaw is the lack of a strong point to the story.

Hollywood has generated many solid adaptations of best-selling author Stephen King's work. This isn't one of them.

His duty is to sound the “Last Trumpet,” signally the destruction of the Earth and its troublesome inhabitants on Judgement Day. Though the fanciful farce is quite funny, the movie didn’t do great at the box office, and Benny used it as a running joke on his radio and TV shows for years. It’s a must-see for any serious film fan, but let’s focus on the lesser known “The Horn Blows at Midnight.” Walsh got his start acting in silent films in 1909 before transitioning to the director’s chair after he lost his right eye in a freak automobile accident in which a jackrabbit crashed through the windshield of his automobile. Director Keith Thomas’ dark, comic-bookish take on the novel is a poorly constructed film, lacking characterization, detail, purpose, and thrust. The movie never connects emotionally and barrels through its relatively sparse hour-and-a-half running time.

What are critics saying about the reboot of Firestarter, the newest Stephen King adaptation? Check out the reviews!

You can also see what other upcoming Stephen King book-to-screen adaptations are in the works, and check out our 2022 Movie Release Schedule to see what else is coming soon to theaters. The first half builds the characters and sets the stakes, but the second half feels rushed and haphazard so that none of the emotional payoff lands, this review argues. The original movie staying fairly loyal to the source material allows this movie to make changes that should surprise even die-hard Stephen King fans:

Firestarter, the new horror movie based on the Stephen King novel starring Zac Efron, has opened weak reviews, scoring just 38% on Rotten Tomatoes.

Unfortunately, the studios behind The Purge movies and Halloween movies apparently couldn’t find a spark, and we’ve been left with another mundane King-inspired feature film. On the bright side, we still have monster movie Salem’s Lot later this year, and a selection of other King-related projects in various states of development. The thriller movie is directed by Keith Thomas, and features Efron as Andy McGee, a telepath whose daughter Charlie starts exhibiting the power to manifest and control fire.

He, his wife Vicky (Sydney Lemmon) and daughter Charlie (Ryan Kiera Armstrong)—the role made famous by a wee Drew Barrymore—all possess supernatural abilities ...

Firestarter is a soulless remake of an already iffy Stephen King adaptation that only makes changes for the worse. There are fewer hordes of agents on Andy’s heels and less time spent on the loving relationship between father and daughter. Zac Efron steps into the shoes of Andy McGee, a telepath gifted with powers during a U.S. government experimentation program. How can a film hinged on bursts of illuminating heat be such a dimly lit, overly darkened representation of lesser choices whenever Teems dares deviate from the already dodgy source inspiration? Scott Teems’ one-dimensional screenplay becomes a chore as Andy and Charlie McGee flee from secret government agencies without the thrill of pursuit. Keith Thomas’ The Vigil is an extraordinary examination of Jewish demonology; his lifeless Firestarter extinguishes any flames of intrigue that 1984’s hammier version might inspire.

Firestarter, 2022. Directed by Keith Thomas. Starring Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Zac Efron, Sydney Lemmon, Kurtwood Smith, Michael Greyeyes, Gloria Reuben, ...

The way this review sounds, you might be shocked to learn that this first act is decent if we are going off of the standards of the rest of the movie. In a metaphor for puberty (similar to the novel and other Stephen King novels such as Carrie), Charlie is losing control holding her powers inside. Admittedly, there is a level of competent craftsmanship here, especially from John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter and Daniel A. Davies’ serviceable pounding synthetic score, and Ryan Kiera Armstrong is trying her best to ignite a spark. Stephen King is such a rich storyteller in terms of characterization that whenever watching one of the several cinematic adaptations of his work, it’s immediately evident when those characters are stripped down of any complexity and to their basics. That somewhat sums up Firestarter, but with dated special effects and nonsensical action sequences; at one point, someone is set on fire inside a car, except the flames don’t burn up the vehicle itself. As such, there are characters here that don’t even serve a purpose, in addition to much of their backstory, details, and layers ripped away.

The film, adapted from the Stephen King novel, stars Zac Efron and is a remake of the 1984 original starring Drew Barrymore.

Zac Efron leads the cast as Andy McGee, the telepathic father of daughter Charlie, who possesses the power of pyrokinesishas – aka the ability to make fire with her mind. Who is in the cast of the remake? The 1984 version – which stars Drew Barrymore in the role of Charlie, and Heather Locklear as her mother Vicky – is widely considered as the worst Stephen King adaptation to date, with the novelist even going on the record to admit that he hated it. Firestarter is adapted from Stephen King’s novel of the same title, which was published in 1980. The sci-fi horror follows a girl named Charlie (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) who has the power of pyrokinesis, and along with her telepathic father Andy, is being pursued by an ominous government agency. A remake of 1984’s Firestarter, adapted from the Stephen King novel of the same title, has been remade once again, with Zac Efron leading the cast.

Zac Efron stars as the father of a girl, Charlie, who is learning to control her powers.

Zac Efron pays Andy, Charlie’s father, and he’s got powers, too — with a twitch of the neck, he can cloud people’s minds. This movie brushes aside a lot of things — the most shocking thing about it is how soggily noncommittal it is. The first “ Firestarter” (1984) starred a not-yet-10-year-old Drew Barrymore as a girl who can start fires — with her mind, which makes all the difference.

The new adaptation of Stephen King's best-selling novel is all fizzle, no sizzle.

He kills Vicky and manages to finally nab Andy in a compressed version of events from the book, while Charlie ultimately comes for the Shop with vengeance on her mind. But this Firestarter doesn’t even try; Charlie simply arrives at the rather threadbare Shop HQ and torches a handful of extras before the baffling ending. In one especially horrific scene, Charlie accidentally fries a cat with her power; her dad comes along and teaches her to control the flames by using them on the still-living cat. So sure, put her in public school, where kids bully and tease anyone who seems shy or out of place, like Charlie does (Armstrong is okay, but doesn’t seem sure of how to play the role). Vicky is already dead when King opens his novel, murdered by Shop operatives, and Andy and Charlie stay on the road under assumed names with the Shop on their tails. The substances give Andy and Vicky limited psychic and telekinetic powers, but turn their daughter Charlie into a literal weapon, providing her with the ability to start fires with her mind.

Not even Zac Efron and a killer John Carpenter score can light up this damp Stephen King adaptation. NOW STREAMING: Powered by JustWatch.

Some of the film’s more interesting moments revolve around Rainbird, and Michael Greyeyes gives the most compelling performance. The fact that NBC Universal held screeners back until the last possible moment speaks to Firestarter’s entertainment quotient more than any review ever could. I won’t spoil the ending, but if Charlie had an online store she’d be selling shirts that say “I burned down The Shop and all I got was this new dad.” Charlie’s attack on The Shop bears some delightful carnage, but even that feels too little, too late. Vicky has a telekinetic ability she almost never uses, while Andy has the ability to “push” people to do his bidding. Unfortunately, everything after that initial showdown is a lifeless slog. But everything in between these points of light is as exciting as an untoasted cheese sandwich.

Keith Thomas' adaptation of 'Firestarter' struggles to find relevance in a world heavily steeped in its source's influence.

Even if one had made the perfect adaptation of King’s novel, to the point that folks would shout hosannas from the rooftops at your favorite genre film festival provided that it premiered there, it would still have to prevail against the kind of deja vu-like indifference that emerges when someone watches a film that reminds them of other and more memorable films that came about in a perfect cultural storm and commanded the moment’s attention. It’s one thing to be skeptical and fearful of power this great in the hands of a child, but the one stroke of genius that Mark L. Lester had in casting Drew Barrymore in the original was that she was heavily emotive, even if she wasn’t given as much to do as she could have. There’s a sad soulfulness that Lester was able to draw from, and the film is cognizant of it: Just look at the differences between the posters for each Firestarter. One emphasizes the fundamental childishness of the character — a vacant gaze, familiar to most parents, that all children show when do not understand the cruelty they wreak upon the world — while the other has her practically grimacing at the camera and viewer as if to suggest that she, not the world she inhabits, is the thing to be feared. The third is the more intangible and out of Thomas’ control, and I don’t fault him for this at all, but Firestarter, unlike something like Carrie, is a narrative that has been wholly absorbed into the culture at large to the point that it feels generic. It’s just too smooth and dark to become atmospheric in a home environment, to say nothing of what it must be like in a theater. The first is the film’s look, which is digitally desaturated and bisexually-lit in the way that a lot of cheaper horror projects are nowadays: it looks fundamentally generic, especially in comparison to the original, which was still shot on film and retains a real texture.

Andy and Vicky McGee (Zac Efron and Sydney Lemmon) fell in love during an experimental drug trial for telepaths overseen by a shadowy government agency known as ...

That can’t be said about the disorientingly hazy shallow-focus photography, which reflects a sense of paranoia building up within the characters, if to a distracting extent. For one, it seemed as if it could only grow in cultural cachet, as the 1984 film version is considered even by King to be among the worst adaptations of one of his books. Captain Hollister (Gloria Reuben), who’s been searching for Andy and Vicky since Charlie’s birth, is alerted to the family’s whereabouts after Charlie, a social outcast, unleashes her powers in terrifying fashion during a game of dodgeball.

Firestarter, starring Zac Efron and based on the Stephen King novel, fails to ignite.

The story feels muted and dry -- as Charlie and Andy's life on the lam seems to last one day (and saga-feeling elements are crunched down into something that feels more like a short story) -- and the look of the film is washed out, with the appeal and vibe of a TV movie. Armstrong stars as Charlie McGee, a girl born with tremendous powers thanks to the government experiments inflicted on her parents (which gave them various telepathic/telekinetic abilities). On the run from "The Shop," the shadowy scientific think tank that lab-ratted them, Charlie's abilities are far more dangerous than that of her mom and dad, as she not only has both of their gifts but also the skill of incineration. Not only are superhero stories now the meat and potatoes of our mainstream multiplex fabric, but "youths discovering powers" is its own overflowing well.

Zac Efron tries his best in an otherwise regrettable retread of the horror author's tale of a girl with superpowers.

Scott Teems’s drearily perfunctory script is at least not as howlingly bad as his script for Halloween Kills, a small mercy, although both films bizarrely share John Carpenter in charge of the music, his throwback synth score working at odds with Thomas’s pedestrian aesthetic. While the original is far from indispensable (it’s also rather dull), at the very least it provided a showcase for a young Drew Barrymore, who gave a typically precocious and persuasive performance. It’s perhaps why the arrival of Firestarter is even more of a bore, retelling a story we know all too well and don’t need to hear yet again.