MIKE AT THE MOVIES: Firestarter Remake Lacks Spark

by MIKE ORLOCK

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Stephen King has written so many bestselling novels during his literary career (64 and counting) that it’s no mystery why more than 30 of them have made it to theater screens since the 1976 Brian De Palma adaptation of Carrie got things rolling. What is a mystery is why some of them have been remade since their cinema debut. Take Firestarter (R), for example. Please.

I can understand why the 1984 film was greenlit. Stephen King was hot. Young Drew Barrymore, fresh from E.T. fame, was in. Horror was and is a dependable cash cow because budgets are smaller. The returns might not be blockbuster, but they’re solid, and even though the result in ’84 was substandard Steve, the film turned a modest profit.

I can even understand the TV reboot Firestarter: Rekindled, which played on the Sci-Fi Channel in 2002. Lots of cable channels were scrounging for content, and the King name had (and still has) currency.

But this new version of King’s 1980 novel, starring Zac Efron as the beleaguered father of a prepubescent girl whose mood swings result in raging infernos, has me scratching my head. This is a Blumhouse Production – a studio that has risen to prominence and profit on the wings of Get Out, Ma and other horror films with a cutting-edge social sensibility that has redefined the genre – so I was expecting something more.

Director Keith Thomas, working from a screenplay by Scott Teems, does his best to keep things sinister, if not topical. Young Charlie (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) is the progeny of two flower children (Efron and Sydney Lemmon) who are living off the grid. They’re escapees from a secret government experiment in mind control gone terribly wrong. 

The mad scientist who’s responsible (creepy Kurtwood Smith) tells his bosses that the little girl is a walking nuclear bomb, so naturally “the agency” is intent on capturing her to weaponize her – a boneheaded decision that results in the usual death and destruction on a grand scale. But other than a couple of crisply directed action sequences involving lots of fire, the film generates less heat than rubbing two sticks together.

Let’s hope this Firestarter – currently in theaters, but simultaneously streaming on Peacock – is the last, and that the next King remake is worth the time and money.

In another lifetime, Mike Orlock wrote film reviews for the Reporter/Progress newspapers in the western suburbs of Chicago. He has also taught high school English, coached basketball and authored three books of poetry. He currently serves as Door County’s poet laureate.