Firestarter

Firestarter (1984)

Directed by: Mark L. Lester
Written by: Stanley Mann based on the novel by Stephen King
Starring: Drew Barrymore, David Keith, George C. Scott, Martin Sheen, Heather Locklear, Art Carney, Louise Fletcher, Freddie Jones

A sort of generic Stephen King movie about a little girl with magic powers enabling her to set stuff on fire. Yeah, okay, so there's the whole scientific explanation for why she has these magic powers, which had something to do with Scanners, but their basically magic powers.

Anyway, she and her father (who also has magic Scanner-like powers) are running away from these government guys who want to either use her power or kill her. Or both. I have no idea. And then there's this pedophile who's also an assassin and a friendly orderly...

So the SFX weren't bad. Some of them were pretty... well, '80s, but they sure as hell blew a lot of shit up. 'splosions are fun.

The whole movie was painfully '80s, right down to the soundtrack by Tangerine Dream (the same people responsible for the atrocious music in Near Dark). And it was all so fucking corny. I couldn't believe that anyone could actually stand to write that shitty dialogue. Shoot me fucking now.

Drew Barrymore was about the cutest button in the drawer, but I was slightly distracted by her looking exactly the same as she does now. It's disturbing. Anyway, she wasn't great, but I think that was mostly the fault of the writing. I mean, come on. She was always whining about how sorry she was. I could just puke. Preferably in somebody else's toilet. Or in their car. That's be funny.

Moving on, through most of the movie, I found myself wondering when Martin Sheen was going to come back, which isn't really a good thing. I don't like Martin Sheen very much, but he and George C. Scott were probably the most interesting things in the whole movie (what the hell they were doing in it, I have no idea). And holy shit was George creepy. I mean... what was up with that?

Yep. The movie was extremely boring. There was no drama. I didn't give two fucks about what happened. I just kind of wanted the movie to be over. I spent most of it thinking about everything it had in common with other Stephen King movies (Carrie in particular). At least the dad wasn't a writer. I think that might actually have killed me.

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