🔥 Firestarter (2022) – A Remake That Burns Out Before It Sparks

Lets start by showing y’all the trailers shall we?

🎬 Trailers First

Since this is a Universal film, y’all know what that means? Cue Universal Logo!

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📖 Non-Spoiler Plot Overview

The Firestarter remake tries to retell Stephen King’s story of Charlie McGee, a young girl with pyrokinetic powers hunted by a shadowy government agency called The Shop. Instead of modernizing the tale or expanding on the original, the film strips away tension, character depth, and even basic logic — leaving us with a hollow, rushed mess that feels more like a failed pilot episode than a movie.


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🎭 Character Rundown

Charlie McGee (Ryan Kiera Armstrong): She does her best with the role, but the script reduces Charlie to a moody kid who randomly screams fire into existence. No nuance, no buildup — just pyro tantrums.

Andy McGee (Zac Efron): Miscast. He doesn’t sell “desperate father on the run.” His performance feels flat, as if he doesn’t even believe the script. His psychic “push” powers barely get used.

Vicky McGee (Sydney Lemmon): Completely wasted. Dies early with no emotional weight. She’s more of a checkbox than a character.

John Rainbird (Michael Greyeyes): One of the only bright spots — Greyeyes has presence — but the movie neuters his menace. He’s barely threatening and ends up being rewritten into an anti-hero by the end.

Captain Hollister (Gloria Reuben): Gender-swapped from the original, but with no added depth. Just a bland, corporate villain who sits behind a desk.



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⏱️ Pacing / Story Flow

The pacing is atrocious. The film feels both rushed and slow — somehow cramming key events into minutes, yet stretching nothing scenes to the breaking point. Tension is nonexistent. Entire chunks of the original story (like the road-movie survival vibe and Charlie’s emotional struggle with her powers) are glossed over or skipped.


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✅ Pros

Michael Greyeyes (Rainbird) at least tries to bring gravitas.

The new synth score by John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter, and Daniel Davies is legitimately great — too good for this movie.



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❌ Cons

Zac Efron is wildly miscast. He looks like a dad on vacation, not a father fleeing government assassins.

The story cuts out major emotional beats, making the family dynamic paper-thin. You don’t care about them because the movie doesn’t care.

Rainbird’s character is rewritten into something unrecognizable, losing all menace.

The effects look cheap — fire that looks like screensaver CGI instead of dangerous, practical flames.

The tone is confused: part family drama, part horror-lite, part bargain-bin superhero flick.

The ending is laughably bad, with Charlie inexplicably teaming up with Rainbird as if they’re “friends now.” It undoes the entire point of the story.



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💭 Final Thoughts

This remake fails on every level. It strips away what made the original terrifying — the paranoia, the government’s cruelty, the heartbreaking bond between father and daughter — and replaces it with a lifeless script, wooden acting, and baffling creative choices. By the credits, you’re left wondering why this even exists, other than as a cynical IP cash-in.


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⭐ Rating

🔥 1/10 – A wet match that never lights.


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⚠️ Spoiler Warning

The flames sputter from here on out.


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🔥 Spoilers

The film starts similarly to the original: Andy and Vicky trying to raise Charlie while hiding her powers. But instead of slowly building her abilities, the remake makes her explode in public — literally burning a bully in a bathroom stall. There’s no sense of escalation, just random fiery outbursts.

Andy’s psychic “push” is also gutted. In the original, it was a tragic, painful gift; here, it’s barely used and never explored. His connection with Charlie is weak — you never buy the father-daughter bond.

When The Shop sends Rainbird, he quickly kills Vicky in one of the most rushed, anticlimactic scenes imaginable. The movie doesn’t stop to grieve or build weight. It just moves on, like her death was a footnote.

The middle drags with filler scenes of Charlie being angsty, Andy looking confused, and Hollister giving exposition from behind a desk. The paranoia, survivalism, and tension of being hunted? Completely gone.

The third act is where the film completely loses itself. Charlie is captured by The Shop but instead of breaking free in a cathartic inferno like in the 1984 film, the movie makes the bizarre choice to turn Rainbird into a sympathetic ally. Yes, the same man who murdered her mother. They team up. It’s absurd, tone-deaf, and betrays the entire story.

The climax? Charlie burns some soldiers, blows up a building, and then just… walks off into the woods with Rainbird. No catharsis. No closure. Just confusion and a broken narrative.


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🔥 1984 vs 2022 – Why the Original Still Holds Up

The original Firestarter (1984) isn’t a perfect film, but compared to this remake it looks like a masterpiece. Drew Barrymore gave Charlie heart and vulnerability — you cared about her struggle. David Keith’s Andy was a flawed but desperate father, his psychic “push” making his nose bleed and adding real stakes. Rainbird, played by George C. Scott, was terrifying and manipulative — the kind of villain that lingered in your nightmares.

Most importantly, the 1984 film leaned into paranoia and survival horror. Charlie’s powers weren’t just CGI fireballs; they felt dangerous, raw, and destructive. The remake, on the other hand, strips all that away in favor of cheap visuals and baffling character choices.

The difference is night and day: one is flawed but fiery, the other is a damp pile of ashes.


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🔥 The biggest crime of this remake isn’t just that it’s bad — it’s that it’s boring. Firestarter (1984) had passion, danger, and real fire. This one just fizzles out, proving that not every Stephen King story needs a remake — especially one that strips away the spark.