Firestarter

  I like Stephen King. The man has written a lot of 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 as far as I'm concerned. Included in those 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 not an easy story to adapt. What feels like the second half of a very long novel has the two main characters incarcerated and is mostly about psychological manipulation, which is never very cinematic. The infamous '80s adaptation is a snoozefest whenever there's no fire or George C. Scott on screen. But it's such a good novel, you'd 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 shoestring budget, and it was shepherded to production and co-written by... Akiva fucking Goldman. Better luck next time. Maybe in another forty years.

 While the novel dropped you straight in the heat (ha!) of things, 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 at an incident at school and The Shop 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... not as memorable. He's given his own telepathic powers this time around, and a history (he was kicked out of the organization, and before they call him in again he was working as a janitor. Umm... Badass?)
 We get treated to a pan through his loft-like digs, which... includes a drawing board full of childlike 'creepy' drawings - you know, the shitty horror trope they always use 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 not exactly a riveting scene, and seems to maybe be setting up a running theme (parental fears of your kids doing things they'll regret or hurt them, maybe?)
 Except no, the 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 too, except nah. It's mentioned a couple of times later but isn't really important or anything and people are burned with abandon whenever the scripts needs it.

 So finally Firestarter and dad are on the run. We've caught up with the start of the novel!
 They crash on a poor farmer's house (they kept this bit in the previous adaptation, too), but the goon catches up, captures dad while Charlie hides out in the woods. Later, guided by visions Charlie finds The Shop headquarters and burns some fools, her dad dies, and she goes mental, burns everything and everyone.
 There's some head-scratchingly stupid business with Rainbird and then credits roll with the abruptness of an 80s movie.

 As a story, it's... 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 it's kind of embarrassing. The acting is all over the place, but honestly: much as I don't have a particularly high opinion of Zach Effron, I wouldn't blame him or any of the other actors. 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. They even thought it was worth putting it in the trailer! Screw this noise.

 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 flamethrower. Most of the other fire-heavy scenes are as underwhelming as the drama, due to obvious budget limitations. The filmmaking is indifferent, without any cool or memorable scenes.
 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 of living things.
 As in 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.)

 This never looked good, and yep, I can confirm that it fails to meet even the lowest of low expectations. Go watch The Innocents 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 really good pyrotechnics.
 Or, you know, just go read the damn book.