The clumsy new Firestarter adaptation does one major thing better than the 1984 original

polygon.com:

Zac Efron isn’t terrible in Peacock’s adaptation of Stephen King’s 1980 novel Firestarter, but he is distracting. Every once in a while, while watching it, the thought appears unbidden, as if it was placed by one of the film’s psychic protagonists: Oh yeah, Zac Efron is in this. As with the 1984 film version of Firestarter — widely acknowledged as one of the worst King adaptations — the cast and crew of the 2022Firestarter features names that seem too high-profile for this particular project. Where the new version actually surpasses the ’84 movie is that in this case, at least a couple of those names deliver.

Efron stars alongside Sydney Lemmon (Helstrom, Fear the Walking Dead) and Ryan Kiera Armstrong (Anne with an E, Black Widow) as Andy McGee, patriarch of a small clan burdened with destructive psychic powers coveted by a CIA-esque government agency known as the DSI. Andy can psychically “push” people into doing things, a skill he’s using to cure nicotine addictions for cash in an early scene. Vicky (Lemmon) refuses to use her ill-defined powers at all. And their young daughter, Charlie (Armstrong), treats her pyrokinetic abilities like a mental illness, using breathing exercises and self-soothing techniques to keep them at bay.

King’s novel and the 1984 film both startin medias res, after DSI agents finally track down the McGee family and force Andy and Charlie to go on the run. The 2022Firestarter backs up to the moment where Charlie’s powers begin to reemerge so Scott Teems’ embarrassing screenplay can explain some things. Teems also wrote 2021’s disappointingHalloween Kills, andFirestarter similarly suffers from crude exposition and convoluted themes. (Much like Halloween Kills, this film apparently can’t decide