WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for Brightburn, in theaters now.
As Brandon Breyer (Jackson A. Dunn) goes on his murder spree in Brightburn, Kansas, there's nothing the townsfolk, police or even the adoptive parents who found him in a crashed spaceship more than a decade earlier can do to stop him.
However, as intriguing as it may be to watch producer James Gunn & Co. take on a bloodthirsty Superboy, as the adolescent supervillain barrels from one victim to the next, glaring errors begin to arise, burning holes into the narrative.
CAITLYN'S NONSENSICAL SILENCE
Brandon uses his super-speed and flight to visit his crush, Caitlyn, only to be rejected, a humiliation that fuels his bullying at school. In retaliation, Brandon breaks Caitlyn's hand, which results in her mother warning him to stay away. However, after embracing his destiny as an alien conqueror, Brandon visits Caitlyn again, this time bearing flowers, and tells the girl he will take care "take care" of her mom so they can be together.
Erica goes missing, and the audience sees she's the first victim of Brandon's killing spree. But as the bodies begin to stack up around town, Caitlyn remains quiet. She certainly may have been scared, but she should have spoken up once it became clear that Brandon disposed of her mother's body. Oddly enough, that silence, and Caitlyn's overall arc, are forgotten, as the film never returns to her, Brandon's threat or his determination for them to be together.
THE BLOODY TEE
After killing his uncle Noah by dropping his truck from the sky, Brandon comes home at midnight, and tells his parents he was playing soccer; he even names the friends he was supposedly with. But despite more suspicious behavior, his parents never bother to corroborate his story. That Brandon hid his shirt should have been enough to raise some flags.
When his father Kyle (David Denman) investigates later finds the bloody jersey, his mother Tori (Elizabeth Banks) insists it could be anybody's blood, and not necessarily Noah's. Shockingly, she drops the matter, even though Kyle establishes that Brandon visited his uncle the night of the killing. They suspect Brandon is a killer, but Tori somehow ignores the tee and begs Kyle to spend quality time with the boy as if nothing happened. Also, seeing as Brandon could magically appear in bedrooms, we're left to wonder why he didn't simply sneak in after murdering his uncle.
THE FINAL SLAUGHTER
In the finale, Brandon fries Kyle's skull, drops Tori down onto the house, and kills some police who respond to the 911 call. He then decides to bring down a plane onto the family home in an attempt to hide what he's done. The news report says his parents were found at the house; however, the father's body was left in the forest. Also, the cops called for backup well before the plane crashed, so the sheriff's department already knew something was going on at the Breyer house.
They even investigated Brandon before this massacre, so shouldn't someone find it strange another disaster occurs that's tied to the boy? To top it off, at the home of their prime suspect, we see on the plane debris the Brightburn symbol, which Brandon leaves as a signature at all of the other murder scenes. That suggests he's the common denominator, and the symbol is something the police actually felt belonged to the kid. Instead of piecing together the clues, though, the police merely give the boy cookies in the back of the ambulance.
Directed by David Yarovesky, Brightburn is produced by James Gunn and written by Brian Gunn and Mark Gunn. The film stars Elizabeth Banks, David Denman, Jackson A. Dunn, Matt Jones, Meredith Hagner, Steve Agee, Becky Wahlstrom and Stephen Blackehart.