Review of Firestarter (2022) by Rogerbee — 14 May 2022

Just so dreadful that I have to warn others.

Started badly with a close up view of a baby being breastfed, like it was done for the male gaze. Then, as expected, a kind of origin story intro of the baby making the mobile in her cot catch fire. Cut to the dad (Zac Efron) in bed and a great opportunity to show him tensed up and shirtless, then he put his shirt on, bizarrely tensing his 6 pack while doing so, which looked so unnatural.

Then the story unfolded as badly as possible, with every character encountered being stupid, saying annoying things, being totally dislikable and taking away any empathy you might otherwise have with them.

The school teacher was the worst. She let the girl be attacked by a dodgeball slammed into her head from behind, and instead of seeing this and disciplining the aggressor, she abandoned her class to follow the girl to the toilets where she noticed the cubicles scorching hot and the cubicle door being blown off by some sort of explosion.

Rather than calling an ambulance or seeing if her pupil is okay, or even trying to comfort her after she survived an explosion, she just expressed incredulity. Then, just as any teacher would do, with her gym class still unattended, she reported it as a bad behaviour incident, somehow believing the unarmed girl caused the explosion in an act of malice and the parents were warned that they police would be involved. By now the film was totally detached from reality and people were acting dumber and dumber and dumber, but then we were introduced to more and more dislikable and idiotic characters.

When the girl set fire to her mum's sleeves, the dad tried to comfort the mum as she was suffering severe 3rd degree burns, but didn't think to try to put water onto her or to take her to the kitchen sink to stop the burning with running water. Instead she just got barbecued arms. You'd have thought they would have had a few first aid kits set up specifically for burns.

The lowest point in this film was when the girl's mother was attacked by a hitman, and both she and her dad abandoned her body, seemingly 100% sure she was dead and couldn't be saved, without even investigating to check for a pulse. Yet, there was no grieving at all. No funeral, no prayer, no crying, nothing. I wasn't even sure she was dead until it was mentioned later.

Instead the girl tried to stroke a cat, got scratched and partly cooked it. it was left smoking and whimpering with its fur burning. The dad didn't try to stop the cat burning, and we heard it burn for a minute or so, but suggested to the girl to put it out of its misery. So it was cooked again, with torturous screams heard as it died, but this death actually warranted a burial and a prayer to be said. Along with grieving. More than the mum got.

So, it continued. At one point, the dialogue was so bad that I literally covered my ears to try to shield myself from its stupidity.

I left about an hour in, but wish I left after the first minute.

The worst film I have ever seen.

Actually, I have to add, there were but two lines which made me smile. Both delivered by this old mixed race Southern Carolina-sounding farmer character. When he asked the dad what he did for a job and found out he was a life coach, he said "The world is going to hell in a hand basket!" Which was actually a hilarious way of criticising modern society. And, a short while after, when the dad insisted that he wasn't a killer on the run, as the TV news said he was, he replied "You mean I can't trust my TV?!". If this was intentionally ironic, then it's another hilarious observation on how gullible we are and how we worship TV.