Brightburn

This is sorta a case of “Superman Meets the Omen”, as a couple adopts a small boy they find who crashlands from another planet. But when he reaches the age of 10, he begins to manifest strange powers, and shortly he’s turning them against everyone around them in lethally gruesome ways.

In many ways, this is very trashy – this film hasn’t met a gore effect it doesn’t like, the plotting is laid down in fairly unsubtle way (the childless couple is implied by their library consisting of nothing but fertility books, and the one science class we see the kid in practically rings out “see the parallels”). And it’s really very willing to let the kid be horrible fairly frequently – once he turns, there’s no attempt to give him any sympathy. Elizabeth Banks as the mum has the brunt of most of the acting material, and while her character is perhaps beaten a little too hard with the stupid stick as she keeps on insisting her little boy couldn’t possibly be doing anything wrong, Banks largely makes it work. The ending shows a few signs of both low budget and a reluctance to close off too many possibilities for a sequel, meaning it’s slightly dissatisfying as a standalone piece, but as a short (90 minutes), sharp shocker, this does the job reasonably well.