There was a lot of potential here, and I’m not quite sure what happened for it to have resulted in something so bland and uninspired. I haven’t read the Stephen King book this is based off, nor have I watched the original 1984 “Firestarter”, but I’ll bet that they are at least more coherent and interesting than what we got here.

The story is about a girl who posses supernatural powers to set anything on fire. Her parents had participated in some genetic mutation trial (I’m not quite that sure about this as the film doesn’t really go into much detail), they also have powers but are not quite as strong as their daughter’s. The girl has trouble controlling her powers, especially amidst school drama. All the while, a secret organization (who I guess supervised the initial mutation trial) are trying to hunt down and terminate the parents. The story is admittedly much more interesting than what we got.

If the movie is dull, the color pallet is even duller. Not sure why this was done, it would’ve been nice to see brighter colors here as it would’ve made it a bit more enjoyable to watch. There really isn’t much camerawork. The visual effects are pretty poor and generic, and the same goes for the acting. Everyone here is doing the bare minimum.

As for the screenplay and the editing, it feels like there are major chunks of the movie missing. Character’s deaths are gotten over in a flash, Kurtwood Smith (from “That 70’s Show”) shows up for one scene than disappears, and the entire ending sequence didn’t make much sense at all. The movie only runs about an hour and 30 minutes and the book is about 600 pages long so I think there was a lot missing here, and it doesn’t seem like they did much to hide it.

If there is anything noteworthy in this film, it’s John Carpenter’s music which was nice to listen to every now and then.

The film is overall not very entertaining, and there are many stretches which could’ve been shorted or even taken out entirely. Maybe replaced with something of more substance, but who knows?

I was watching this with my friend, and by the end of it we were just perplexed at what we had just watched. Even worse, we were bored. But then we got up out of our seats and went on with our day, forgetting we even watched this movie.