Firestarter

  I like Stephen King. The man has written some crap over the years, but the quality of his good stuff more than makes up for any missteps; Hell, his first eight books alone are an incredible run of classics - lifetime pass material, if you ask me.
 Included in those early novels is 1980's Firestarter, a killer yarn about a prepubescent pyrokinetic and her telepath dad on the run from a shadowy government agency that is behind the experiments that caused their powers and considers them its property. It's the platonic ideal for what many think of when they think of a Stephen King story, especially when you get a pyrokinetic kid running around going against shady government types.

 It's not an easy book to adapt. The back end of the (fairly long) novel has the two main characters incarcerated and is mostly about psychological manipulation, which is never very cinematic. There's an infamous '80s adaptation (which I actually think is kind of decent, but also a bit of a snoozefest whenever there's no fire or George C. Scott on-screen) that illustrates how hard it is - I mean, even DePalma at the height of his powers and a huge budget couldn't crack it. But it's such a good novel, I guess it's easy to think if they tried again with a proper budget and a smart scriptwriter this would work.
 Well, tough luck- this time around Firestarter was produced by Blumhouse with their usual budget limitations, and it was shepherded to production by... Akiva fucking Goldsman. Better luck next time. Maybe in another forty years.

 While the novel dropped you in media res and kept running forwards with a few flashbacks, this adaptation starts things out with pre-teen Charlie (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) and her parents (Zach Effron and Sydney Lemmon; They keep the mom alive for the first act here) living as a semi-normal family in the burbs.
 Charlie's fire powers are bubbling under the surface, though, and are getting harder and harder to control. It comes to head when she loses control for a bit at school and The Shop, a shadowy government agency that tries to harness psychics is alerted to their presence.

 They choose to send agent Rainbird (Michael Greyeyes) after them, who deserves special mention. He was memorably played in the '80s adaptation by George C. Scott in indianface with psychotic conviction and a serious hunger for scenery; Here, he's played by an actual Indian American, who is sadly not nearly as memorable (through no fault of his own). He's given his own telepathic powers this time around, and a backstory (he was kicked out of the organization, and before they call him in again he was working as a janitor.). Like many things in this adaptation, it proves that less is more.
 We get treated to a pan through his loft-like digs, which... includes a drawing board full of childlike 'creepy' drawings - you know, that overused horror trope they always bring out with possessed/demonic/haunted kids, but in this case drawn by an adult. It's original, I'll grant them that.

I think they're setting up his upcoming obsession with Charlie, but like everything
else in this movie it's undercooked to the point of being laughable.

(Also, how can he afford that apartment and all those boots on a janitor's salary? In this economy?)

 Before The Shop sends rainbird after Charlie's family, though, we get a discussion on parenting a pyrokinetic child - should we have her bottle up her powers or, as mom says, teach her to use them?
 It's yet another piss-poor addition to the story, and it's almost immediately resolved: mom was obviously right, and after she's killed dad starts showing little Firestarter how to start fires. Just the script wasting your time, again. Same with trying to teach her child responsibility: never kill people with flames, promise me, etc etc. You'd think that's important, except nah. It's mentioned a couple of times later but people are burned with abandon whenever the scripts needs it.

 So it takes a whole act, but finally Firestarter and dad are on the run. We've caught up with the start of the novel!
 They crash at a poor farmer's house, but the agency goon catches up and captures dad while Charlie hides out in the woods. Later, guided by visions Charlie finds The Shop headquarters and burns some fools, there's a tragic death, Charlie goes mental and burns everything and everyone. Spoilers, by the way.
 There's some baffling stupid business with Rainbird and then credits roll with the abruptness of an old Chinese martial arts movie.

 As a story, this adaptation is... bad. So fucking bad. It doesn't capture anything of what made the novel memorable, and the changes it makes are so inept and half-assed they made me embarrassed on scriptwriter Scott Teems's behalf. It's so bad it made me wonder how much influence Goldsman had on the script.
 The acting is all over the place, but to be honest - as much as I don't have a particularly high opinion of Zach Effron, I wouldn't blame him or any of the other actors here. Not with the material they're working with. I mean, they have poor Charlie say "liar liar pants on fire" to someone before incinerating them. Some marketing genius even thought it was worth putting that in the trailer! This thing is a monument to miscalculation.

 The music, provided by John Carpenter (among others), is pretty good, but nothing special. Some of the fire effects are also cool, especially one scene where they're clearly using a real flamethrower. Most of the other fire-heavy scenes are as underwhelming as the drama, due to obvious budget limitations and the trouble with making believable CG fire. Other than that, it's a pedestrian-looking movie: Not egregiously bad, but Director Keith Thomas fails to inject any cool or memorable visual ideas.
 Respect is due to the makeup team, though: the burned flesh effects are effective and very painful-looking. The best scenes in the movie are easily the ones where lil' Firestarter has to deal with the aftermath of her firestarting on living things.
 As with The Innocents, there's a very cruel scene involving a cat. Dammit superpowered children, what do you have against cats? I hope they go all Sleepwalkers on your asses.

 Stephen King adaptations have an unwarranted (as far as I'm concerned) reputation for being raging trash fires, but I can confirm that this one fails to meet even the lowest of low expectations. Go watch The Innocents (2021) for your psychic kid fix instead. Or Carrie, or The Shining, or Midnight Special. Or even the 1984 version of Firestarter which at least has some awesome pyrotechnics and an unhinged George C. Scott.
 Or maybe just read the book again. It's really good!