originally posted on tumblr, Mar 26th 2026 

Movie-A-Day-Thon #31: Brightburn (2019)

Don’t look at me like that, of course I’ve wanted to watch the horror Superman movie. It’s been sitting on my folders since forever, and I wanna get done with it. They say Gunn doesn’t miss so let’s see if that hold up!

Appreciate the immediate wasp vs bees analogy, though it’s a bit too on the nose. And that Not-Martha had dyed hair and is an artist, it’s cute! Also glad we don’t dance around too much with the details. We know this is Not-Superman, so we know the basics of things, no need to spell it all out about his alien origins and what powers he’s gonna get. We been knew, let’s get to the horrors of it all stat. It’s just sad that, the horrors are pretty meh.

I’m going to be real with you guys, a kid accidentally using his powers while raising his voice and banging a table, because he wants the gun he was gifted for his birthday despite his parent’s wishes, is so far the scariest thing in this movie. Maybe I’m just too not-American to Get It but like. Dude.

A lot of the movie is just, The Omen but midwest small town vibes. Creepy preteen doing creepy preteen stuff. Which like isn’t bad in itself, bland at worst, but given the premise of the movie, feels like a bigger cop out. This could have been way juicier, we don’t get nearly enough reasoning for Brandon to go off like he does later in the movie. I wish we spent more time with him and how he processed just, Everything. Guys if I wanted to watch Bad Seed then I’d watch Bad Seed, modern cinametography aside. I admittedly haven’t watched that much Superman stuff, but fucking Man of Steel did a better job with the kid Clark horrors than this movie.

The exploding lamp scene was fucked up though. I haven’t winced this bad about eye injury stuff since fucking Dead Space 2. And the car crash too. Like damn, the gore was GORING in this movie, good shit! If only the happenings between the cool action and deaths wasn’t incredibly boring by the halfway mark.