Zac Efron starred in horror film “Firestarter‎”

The film is a 1984 horror film based on Stephen King’s book.

There are so many mediocre films based on Stephen King’s novels that a new rule of thumb needs to be established: If you’re going to make a remake, it has to be better than the original.

But that’s it. We avoided Drew Barrymore’s innate vivacity, not far from E.T. at the time, like Charlie, a little girl with a hot drive.

The protagonist’s hair is not filmed standing high above her head, as if she were in the worst shampoo commercial of all time.

“Firestarter‎” release date: May 13

Cast: Zac Efron, Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Kurtwood Smith, John Beasley, Michael Greyeyes, Gloria Reuben

Director: Keith Thomas

Screenwriter: Scott Teems

Duration: 1 hour 34 minutes

On top of that, the remake, which hit theaters at the same time, was violent and profane enough to earn an R rating.

Or rather, it feels like a pilot for a streaming series that seems inevitable in the never-ending thirst for IP content.

Gifted child actor Ryan Kiera Armstrong is no stranger to Stephen King, having starred in Chapter 2 or Thork, thanks to her recurring role in a season of American Horror Story.

As an 11-year-old girl with the power to burn, she’s convincingly vulnerable and terrifying, due to the fact that she was born to parents with psychic powers of their own, who were the subjects of drug experiments when they were naive college students.

Now Andy (Zac Efron) and Vicky (Sydney Lemmon) live off the grid, hiding from a mysterious government agency that wants to use Charlie’s powers for nefarious purposes.

Andy is a “life coach” who uses his abilities to treat a young woman’s smoking habit.

Such hard work didn’t come without a price, because every time he used them, his eyes started to bleed, like blemishes on the eyes.

But in Stephen King’s story, there’s always a way the past has caught up with you.

After Charlie’s power is noticed, a despicable government agent (Gloria Reuben) sends the Rain Birds to hunt down Charlie’s family and capture Charlie.

When his first attempt was unsuccessful, the father and daughter began to flee, temporarily seeking refuge with an older farmer, before eventually falling into the agency’s grasp.

Needless to say, it all led to a climax.

It’s a little frustrating that director Keith Thomas has been hooked into the mainstream with this able but uncreative effort.

Keith Thomas has written and directed a bolder and more original horror film in recent years, “The Vigil‎” in 2019.

It doesn’t offer any dark wisdom that might enliven this outrageous storyline.

Such material exclaims the baroque style of Brian De Palma, whose commercial breakthroughs are accompanied by the theme “Carrie‎”.

To their credit, the cast went all out, with Greyes as the steely Rain Bird and Efron as the father who desperately protects his daughter and teaches her how to control power.

The film is also remarkably fast-paced, 20 minutes shorter than the bloated 1984 original.

But while it has some real scares, it never reaches the wildly eerie heights one might expect from the film version of one of King’s costumed novels.

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