Rating 18
Length 1h34
Release 13.05.2022
Director Keith Thomas
About After years in hiding from mysterious DSL, Charlie’s reemerging pyrokenisis threatens the life Andy and Vicky have built for their family.
Moon: no moon sighting
Where to Watch: Netflix
Trailer:
The Good
Zac Efron has his top of for a split gratuitous second.
The Bad
The homage to Stranger Things. Just as the film is about to reach its final act, Charlie finds herself in a suburban estate and bullied by boys on bikes. This would only work if these boys were the ones from her class.
There’s no way boys like that, upon seeing a girl who has clearly been through something, shout freak and what not at her. Not unless they know her. Which, to imply that, you’d use the kids from before.
So to do this to resemble a show that took it’s inspiration from the 1984 version and the original novel by Stephen King, feels not only cheap but an attempt to draw in the fandom.
The Ugly
The biggest mistake the creators made with this outing is winding back the clock and starting the story with the McGee’s as a family unit. The beauty of the original and the novel is that we start on an uneven footing by being throwing into the middle of the story and partway along Andy and Charlie’s journey on the run.
Yes, it’s interesting to see the family unit, but it doesn’t add to the story and if anything it slows the pace down to a crawl. It also makes for such a bullshit ending: Charlie is left to go with her hired assassin who just so happened to kill her mother not so long ago!
Ryan Keira Armstrong, as much as I hate saying this, is woefully miscast. It’s a hard job for any youngster to be the protagonist of a film, but when it’s a character like Charlie you really need someone like McKenna Grace or Dakota Fanning.
As it stands, we have 90 minutes of Armstrong pulling ‘Edward meeting Bella’ face.
Final Thoughts
This film is inspiring no one and holds nothing that makes the original, or Stranger Things for that matter, great. Avoid. Rewatch ST, read the novel or dig out the original.
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