Firestarter (1984)
Directed by Mark L. Lester
I’ve been on a Stephen King kick lately. Also I’ve been trying to watch all the horror CEDs that I haven’t watched before, so two birds I guess. Oh and this movie recently got a remake that most people hate, but what else is new?
Firestarter is about a man (David Keith) and his daughter (Drew Barrymore) running from a government organization that is wanting to take the daughter and study her ability to start fires with telepathy. Interesting plot, but hey it was a Stephen King book first. The acting is pretty solid, both Keith and Barrymore do a good job. George C Scott playing a native american was odd, but he was creepy. I always get Keith David and David Keith mixed up, which is odd because one is a badass black man that fought Roddy Piper for what felt like an hour. Anyway, Marty Sheen is in this…and he’s good too, but his role isn’t big, he kind of shows up towards the end and is the head of this organization or something.
The special effects were pretty decent, for the time at least. The ending had a lot of shit going on with fire and bombs. The visual of Drew Barrymore standing in front of intense flames is awesome, so awesome it was the cover of the movie. It isn’t so much scary as an interesting idea. Also, as a father of two young girls, I can’t imagine how many times I would’ve been lit on fire for buying the wrong mac and cheese. So that’s scary…right?
Firestarter is decent, while the plot is cool the pacing is slow man. The ending was batshit crazy and entertaining but the lead up took some time. You could say…it was a….slow…BURN! YEAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! Glasses on. I give Firestarter a C+, idk how many times I’ll watch it, but for a one time spin on the old CED player, it was fun.
