BY CHRISTOPHER STAMM
GUEST MOVIE REVIEWER
Firestarter (Now showing in theatres)
Rated R – for language and violence
Stephen King has an incredible library of work. Granted, his early works are his best – before he got all preachy and decided to do crime novels. (Now don’t get me wrong, those movies of his are pretty good, but not even close to his early works like The Stand, Carrie, Salem’s Lot, and Firestarter.) And his film, Firestarter, was always one of my favorites. It has action, heart, solid story, and interesting villains in the form of a mysterious government agency called The Shop. The characters are well fleshed out and you know their motivations, and, of course, a little girl that can start fires with her mind.
Firestarter was adapted back in 1984 starring Drew Barrymore, and that was a solid adaptation. Not great, but at least good.
But now there is the 2022 travesty version that is the new-and-not-improved Firestarter. Folks, this one is bad. Gone is the heart of the story – which was a father’s love of his daughter and fear for her safety. Now we have Zack Effron teaching his daughter to go ahead and finish torching a stray cat that scratched her. Yep, that really happens in this version.
I really have nothing else to say about this one, except that I gave up on it about 60 minutes in. Maybe it got better in the last half hour, but I am confident it did not.
Later this year another Stephen King novel is being remade: Salem’s Lot. Now that is absolutely one of his best works, so let’s hope that one is better. But it will be a pretty low bar to cross to beat out the dreck that is Firestarter 2022.
Only one star out of five for this one, folks. It really is bad.