Low budget horror movie Brightburn might not be an official Superman adaptation, but it may as well be. After all, it focuses on a mysterious spaceship that crashes in rural Kansas, where a childless couple discover an infant inside the wreckage and decide to take him in and raise him as their own, but as the child gets older, he begins to display some unusual abilities.
The hook is that young Brandon is soon discovered to be evil to his very core, using his newfound powers to simply destroy things and murder people that he either doesn’t like or get in his way, and sometimes a combination of the two. It’s an excellent premise for a B-level superhero horror film, made even more impressive by how it skirts around the legality of very clearly being inspired by a certain son of Krypton without inviting legal action from DC or Warner Bros.
Despite such an intriguing concept, though, Brightburn doesn’t make the most of the tools at its disposal. It does, however, boast two excellent performances from the always reliable Elizabeth Banks and David Denman as the beleaguered parents trying to reconcile themselves with the fact their unruly child has the capabilities to raze the entire planet to the ground if he feels so inclined, not to mention a ballsy ending.
Brightburn was a decent-sized success at the box office, earning almost $33 million on a budget of just $6 million, and it’s proving to be hugely popular with Netflix subscribers, too. In fact, it currently ranks as the tenth most-watched title in the content library around the world, which isn’t a surprise when it appeals to both superhero and horror fans, with both genres reliable favorites on any streaming service.