Firestarter Review: Keith Thomas’s Horror Remake Fizzles Out Like a Damp Firework

Stephen King’s Firestarter is a perfect candidate for a Blumhouse-stamped remake. 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. Another perk is that it’s a rather lean, small-scale thriller from a master of horror whose work can oftentimes be bloated and hard to translate. And given that Keith Thomas is at the helm of this remake, there was hope that he’d bring a similar dose of the uncanny to the material as he did to his debut feature, The Vigil. Alas, this Firestarter fizzles out like a damp firework.

Andy and Vicky McGee (Zac Efron and Sydney Lemmon) fell in love during an experimental drug trial for telepaths overseen by The Shop, a secret government agency. Years later, they passed on their psychic abilities to their daughter, Charlie (Ryan Kiera Armstrong). But where Andy has learned to control his mind-manipulating power, which he calls “The Push,” Charlie struggles to keep her pyrokinesis in check, and to her parents’ frustration and horror.

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. Subsequently, Hollister sends Rainbird (Michael Greyeyes), a Native American assassin, after the family, leading Charlie and her father to take to the open road in an attempt to evade The Shop’s deadly clutches.

Paramount among this Firestarter’s issues is Scott Teems’s screenplay, which trims King’s already slim narrative into a mere sketch. The film’s opening credits wisely do double duty as an info dump on the McGee clan and the experimental treatment that forever altered their lives, but rather than jumping directly into the action with Charlie and Andy on the run and filling in their backstory in flashes, as King’s novel does, the film focuses on the lead-up to their escape, and in a lethargic fashion that scarcely feels purposeful.

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. And once Firestarter decides to get up and go, it never shakes off the timidity of its style and pacing. Similarly inert is the film’s score by John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter, and Daniel Davies. John Carpenter was attached to direct the 1984 film before he was let go from the project due to The Thing underperforming at the box office, and for those who’ve always wondered just what his Firestarter might have looked like, the flavorless soundscape doesn’t give a single clue.

More disappointing, though, is how quickly Greyeyes’s character disappears from the film. That’s likely a result of John Rainbird being one of King’s more problematic creations, a psychopathic war vet born of half-formed ideas about Native American mysticism, but rather than trying to reimagine or add depth to the character, the filmmakers simply cut their losses by using him as a convenient plot device and shouldering him with some wan sequel setup.

As for Charlie’s fiery fury, it’s depicted in quick bursts that never explode into cathartic pandemonium. Which could be said about the film as a whole, an almost anachronistically short production whose elements just sit there like mishandled kindling, wanting for the sort of creative oxygen that might have set off even the smallest spark.