This is an interesting idea that I wish they had done more with.

| Sep 30, 2019

Despite its simplicity, Brightburn's premise is filled with potential, but it struggles to find anything meaningful to say.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jul 8, 2019

The conceit works brilliantly until, in the closing 20 minutes, it clatters disappointingly into a fatal uncertainty.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 5, 2019

As an antihero with an oedipal complex, neither Brandon nor Dunn is sufficiently creepy or conflicted to launch a new franchise.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 23, 2019

This is primarily a character study, about that thin line between heroism and horror.

| Jun 21, 2019

Because the film that this broadside of brass describes is ultimately, seriously, "Duuuumb!"

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 21, 2019

The final effect... is a disheartening vacuum. Having torn down a myth, it leaves little but a dropped mic in its wake.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 20, 2019

Director David Yarovesky does the fantasy stuff with flair. And the dafter the plot gets, the better the acting conjured from Elizabeth Banks as foster mom.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 19, 2019

That this story's riddled with silly plot holes isn't make or break but, less forgivably, Brightburn is slow and often boring.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 18, 2019

What it lacks in any greater meaning, it makes up for with good old B-movie gore. It's a demon child story wearing the mask of a superhero film, twisting an age-old myth into something quite unsettling, even if it isn't all that deep.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 17, 2019

Crossbreeding superhero tropes with horror staples was an idea laden with promise. Brightburn is enlivened by trademark James Gunn black comedy, but hamstrung by sketchy writing and a botched sense of dread.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Jun 17, 2019

This film draws its strength in part from its willingness to be a more humbly scaled operation than the tentpoles weighted down by mandates for billion-dollar grosses.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 10, 2019

It leans heavily on jump scares and creeps before engaging with its premise, but when it does it's as chilling as Superman's freezing breath.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jun 7, 2019

It's a fine and distinct funhouse ride designed to elicit cackles, then be forgotten about by the next ride.

| Original Score: 3/5 | May 30, 2019

A cure for superhero movie fatigue, this lean, gory horror film...has a coherent narrative and pays off with a bang.

| May 29, 2019

Its harsh, pitiless violence could earn it a cult, but it's ultimately a workmanlike movie playing at being something more renegade-an unconvincing disguise.

| May 29, 2019

If the filmmakers had a modicum of curiosity about the implications of their own idea, the movie might have had something interesting to say.

| Original Score: 1/4 | May 27, 2019

Although Brightburn's final seconds hint at James' more finely attuned cinematic sensibilities the film is not nearly as strong as its villain. It is, however, just as immature.

| Original Score: 2/4 | May 24, 2019

If the goals were a little more clear, the film could've been better...they could've played with the audiences' expectations much more, but this is an enjoyable horror movie, almost a slasher film.

| Original Score: B | May 24, 2019

The premise is intriguing, but this gruesome origin story plays like just another slasher film with idiots for victims.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | May 24, 2019