Think of the worst remake you've ever seen. Chances are it is not as bad as this remake of Stephen King's Firestarter. What went wrong? Well, practically everything.
To start with, the movie is boring. How do you even turn this story about a little girl with the superhuman ability to start fires with her mind into something boring? The folks behind this remake did it by devoting the first half of the movie to young Charlie's homelife with daddy and mommy, before any bad things start to happen. It is dull enough to put you to sleep.
None of the actors chosen for this remake have any screen presence at all. They all sleepwalk through their roles. This is not to be wondered at, because their characters are incredibly uninteresting. They have nothing to say, they have nothing to do.
Yes, they actually make the character of Rainbird uninteresting and dull. And non-threatening. He's a kinder, gentler Rainbird. Sure, he kills Charlie's mother, but in a kind and gentle sort of way, with regret. He's played by some American Indian actor who might as well be paint drying on a wall.
The actor playing Charlie's father is not much better. He has no personality to speak of. All he does in tilt his head to the side and make his eyes bleed, when he uses his psychic power to force others to do things. That power is so weak, it never gets him out of difficulty, which raises the question -- Why the fuck does he even bother to use it?
The Shop appears to be some rooms in a basement somewhere in a building that looks like a highschool in this remake. There is a doctor who seems to be insane, but he's only on the screen for two minutes and he doesn't do anything at all, so he might as well not be there. The leader of Shop is a woman in a business suit. She is on screen for about five minutes in total, and Charlie just torches her when she threatens to get in the way, so her character is completely flat, uninteresting, and impotent, and does nothing to advance the plot.
There is no tension in this turd of a movie, no build up of interest, no psychological twists. It's plot is so simple, I hesitate to call it a plot. Shop finds Charlie's family. The business woman sends Rainbird after them. He kills Charlie's mother, but father and little girl escape. They do boring things for a while, then the father is captured by Rainbird. Charlie turns into the Terminator, and decides that she is single-handedly going to rescue her father from Shop. Instead, she ends up burning him to a crisp along with business lady, and she burns down Shop in what has to be the least spectacular, most tedious, uninteresting climax of an action movie I've ever seen.
I've saved the worst part for last. After Charlie destroys Shop (I'm not giving the movie away here, everyone knows the original), Charlie spares Rainbird's life when he kneels on the floor and offers himself to her as a sacrifice, and he ends up carrying her in his arms away to safety and no doubt to a fairytale life. End of movie.
If the writer, director and produce of this turd set out to make the least interesting movie, they succeeded. In every other possible respect, they failed. I skipped through the boring bits (most of the movie) and if you watch this thing, I recommend you do the same. It has nothing at all to offer anyone. It is a tawdry cash grab to squeeze a few more dollars out of a beloved classic. George C. Scott must be rolling in his grave about what they did to Rainbird.
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