Firestarter Parent Guide

After participating in a strange hallucinogenic chemical test in college, Andy McGee (Zac Efron) and his now wife, Vicky (Sydney Lemmon) developed unusual powers – Vicky gained the ability to move objects with her mind, and Andy could “push” people to do things with his mind. Their daughter, Charlie (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), is far more powerful. She can create and manipulate fire – she just can’t control it. Now the people who dosed her parents with the substance that gave them their powers have heard of her, and they want to study her powers…forever. Desperate to save their child, Andy and Vicky prepare to go on the run – if they can get out in time.

This soulless husk of a film is all the more disappointing as it’s shambling about in the skin of an exciting, dramatic, and emotional Stephen King story. Producer Akiva Goldsman was also responsible for screenwriting another butchery of King’s work, The Dark Tower, which I believed (until now) to be one of the most soulless, pointless, and uninspired crimes against an author to be put to film. But Firestarter really gives it a run for its money.

Where The Dark Tower at least had Idris Elba, every single actor in this film is miscast. Even if they’d hired the entire shortlist for Best Actor awards, though, this film would have been a disaster. The script expertly carves out every meaningful plot element, leaving its tragically misplayed characters to trudge senselessly towards the film’s bizarre conclusion, blissfully unaware that they are less than a pale shadow of real characters. I’ve had dental appointments with more excitement and intrigue than this story.

Parents, even those unfamiliar with the finer points of Stephen King’s work, likely have a good idea that he is hardly a children’s author. Although the film disregards everything else about his writing, it managed to maintain a distinctly adult level of violence. A significant number of characters, and at least one innocent cat, are incinerated – although not infrequently, survive writhing in agony long enough for the protagonist to feel a bit guilty and then finish them off. If you were wondering, that’s a very similar experience to being in the audience.

Less a film and more a series of randomly selected and poorly developed vignettes from a novel, Firestarter fails on every level a film can fail on. Not only is it a poor adaptation, it is a damning confession that the filmmakers have no concept of story, character, or plot. I would gladly choose to be immolated before ever clapping eyes on this festering carcass of a film again. And so would you, if you’d had to watch it.