Director: David Yarovesky
Writers: Brian Gunn, Mark Gunn
Stars: Elizabeth Banks, David Denman, Jackson A. Dunn
Run Time: 1 Hour, 30 minutes
Link: https://amzn.to/383pAwx
Synopsis
The Breyer’s, Tori and Kyle, are “working” on their infertility problem, but they aren’t having much luck in conceiving anything. Suddenly, there’s a loud bang and the power goes out. There’s a red glow out in their field. We then get a montage of baby pictures, and it’s clear that they had a baby somehow. We then jump to ten years later, and the boy’s name is Brandon. We see in school that Brandon knows all about wasps and bees. Wasps are predators. Otherwise, he appears to be a perfectly normal kid.
Something in the barn activates and Brandon has a seizure that night. Tori follows Brandon out to the barn that night, and she finds him trying to break into the padlocked cellar under the barn and mumbling in a strange language. He wakes up; he was in some kind of trance or sleepwalking. The next morning, Brandon has an incident with the lawn mower and learns that he’s pretty much indestructible.
On his twelfth birthday, he fights with his father about a gun he got for a gift. The parents find his porn stash, and they find included several photos of internal organs and anatomy diagrams. Brandon and his dad have the talk about “sexy time” during a camping trip, and Brandon scares the crap out of a girl from school. Mother Toni thinks all his recent changes are due to puberty. Kyle finds Brandon being creepy about the chickens.
The next night, something kills all the chickens. He crushes the girl at school’s hand and gets suspended. The thing in the barn still calls to him at night, and Brandon starts to figure out the language. He once again goes into a trance and starts speaking the language as he floats above the thing. He falls in and gets cut on the metal down there. He’s never been cut or injured in his life until that moment. Toni explains that Brandon came from a crashed spaceship ten years ago. The ship is buried under the barn.
Soon after, Brandon learns he has heat vision. Once again, he ends up in his “girlfriend’s” bedroom, bringing her flowers. He kills the girl’s mother. The next morning, the police investigate the restaurant where she worked- it’s a real mess. Brandon starts seeing a counselor from school, who also happens to be his aunt. At least until he starts to terrorize her. His uncle is next on the list, and he meets a pretty grisly death as well.
The parents catch on to the problem, and Kyle decides to take Brandon out in the woods hunting. The sheriff thinks the symbol that has been left behind spells “BB” or Brandan Breyer. Kyle shoots Brandon in the back of the head (on purpose), and that only makes him mad. It soon all boils down to Tori and Brandon alone in the house. Can she find a weakness?
Commentary
I don’t remember hearing about any kind of Lawsuit involving this film and DC, so they must have changed enough about the Superman origin story to steer clear of the lawsuits, but no one is going to miss out on spotting the similarities between the two stories. Brightburn is the name of the town, just like Smallville. You just know that if the Kryptonians from Superman comics ever achieved regular space flight, there’d a whole lot more of this kind of thing going on than the heroic superman from the comics.
There’s no way “Evil Superman” is going to be in any way subtle, and it’s not. It’s got the best “poke-em-in-the-eye” scene that I’ve ever seen. One particular murder is jaw-droppingly good, and overall, the deaths are extremely over the top.
There really aren’t many real surprises here, it’s exactly what it promises: evil Superboy. If this sounds like a story you’d be interested in, then watch it; it’s well done.