Welcome back-to-Movie Recap. Today I'm gonna show-you a 2019 superhero horror film called,
Brightburn. Spoiler's ahead. Sit back, relax and enjoy.
The movie opens in Brightburn, Kansas. The year is 2006,
and married couple Tori and Kyle Breyer are eager to start their own family.
Unfortunately for the couple, fertility issues are making it difficult for Tori to conceive.
They remain hopeful anyway, books on fertility and childcare litter their shelves.
One fateful night in 2006, the typically quiet backdrop of the Breyer farm is disrupted by a
loud crashing noise. Curious, Tori looks out of the window towards the wide empty field outside.
And bam! The ground shakes and the lights shut off.
In the distance, a bright red light appears in the middle of nothingness.
Just like that, the Breyers are blessed with a baby boy. In a montage of clips,
the baby, named Brandon, grows up. He is a diligent young boy, any parents dream child,
the Breyers most especially. Brandon is incredibly bright, placing in the top .01%
of his class. He helps his parents manage the farm, and has managed to stay out of
trouble. In all the years of his young life, Brandon has not once gotten even a scratch.
In 2018, as Brandon is just about to turn 12 years old, he begins to change. Tori and Kyle try to
dismiss these changes in their bright, young boy to puberty. The doting parents argue that everyone
goes through a rough patch at this stage. They were even worse when they were his age,
they d argue. One would question who they were trying to convince, each other or themselves?
The turning point for Brandon happens one night, as he is fast asleep,
she starts violently shaking. And when he momentarily opens his eyes, they are
bright red. Falling into a trance, he gets up from bed and jumps out of his bedroom window.
Meanwhile downstairs, Tori spends her quiet night alone in the living room, painting.
When she hears a thud outside, gets up to investigate. Incidentally,
she catches a glimpse of Brandon. She's confused about his wandering outside deep in the night.
Worried, Tori follows Brandon who appears to be sleepwalking.
Tori catches up to Brandon at the barn. She spots him hunched over a locked cellar door.
Brandon knows he is not allowed to go into the barn, so he must be sleepwalking.
Tori slowly approaches Brandon from the back. She calls out to him softly,
afraid of startling the boy. When Brandon finally snaps out of his trance, he is visibly shaken.
The next day, the Breyers attempt to cover up the strange incident from the night before.
Tori and Kyle act normal, and get Brandon to help in some yard work. Brandon volunteers to
cut the grass in the backyard. After an accident with the lawnmower, Brandon discovers he has
superhuman strength and may be indestructible. He says nothing of this discovery to his parents.
The Breyers celebrate Brandon's birthday at a local diner with Tori's sister,
Merilee, and her husband, Noah. Noah presents Brandon with a hunting rifle as a gift.
Kyle rebukes Noah's gesture, arguing that Brandon is too young for guns.
Brandon throws a tantrum, so Kyle cuts the party short and takes the family home in a huff.
Feeling a little guilty about ruining Brandon's birthday party,
the Breyers go camping in the woods. Before leaving for their trip,
Tori and Kyle discover disturbing photos hidden under Brandon's bed. Still chucking Brandon's
weird behavior to puberty, Kyle takes his son aside during their camping trip to talk about
sex and sexual urges. Later that night in the woods, Tori discovers Kyle is missing.
Meanwhile, in town, Brandon's classmate Caitlyn is awoken from her sleep when her laptop suddenly
opens and plays music by itself. Feeling spooked about the incident,
Caitlyn gets up from bed to shut her computer and look around the room. She catches a glimpse of
Brandon hiding behind her curtains and screams out to her mother, petrified. Erika, Caitlyn's mother,
rushes to her daughter's room to investigate. However, she finds nothing out of the ordinary.
Back at the camping site, Tori is getting concerned about Brandon's absence.
She calls for him out in the woods with a flashlight in hand. Tori's screaming starts
to sound desperate when she gets no answer. Then all of a sudden, as if out of nowhere,
Brandon appears behind her. He casually tells his mother he only went out to use the toilet.
At home, Kyle grows even more uneasy about Brandon. His suspicions worsen when he finds
their chickens brutally attacked. Kyle expresses his concerns to Tori. He accuses their son of
harming the chickens because he caught him earlier staring menacingly at the coop.
Tori dismisses Kyle's accusations, still choosing to believe her son could never cause any harm.
At school, Brandon is having trouble making friends. Yet he develops a crush on Caitlyn. At
PE class, during a trust exercise, Caitlyn causes Brandon to drop to the ground. She still feels
uneasy around Brandon following the strange encounter in her bedroom the night before.
Brandon feels agitated with hurt and betrayal from Caitlyn's rejection,
so he retaliates. Brandon uses his new-found superhuman strength and crushes Caitlyn's
hand. This lands Brandon in suspension and Tori has to pick him up from school.
That night, Brandon sleepwalks once again to the locked cellar in the barn.
With his super strength, Brandon breaks the cellar's locks. When the cellar is opened,
Brandon becomes possessed. Tori finds Brandon again. But this time,
she finds him levitating and talking in a strange language above the opened cellar door.
When Tori breaks Brandon's trance, he falls into the cellar below.
Underneath the barn, Tori and Kyle hid a large metal object 12 years ago.
And when Brandon falls into it, he accidentally hits the side of the strange metal object.
Tori is surprised to discover that Brandon is bleeding from his injury.
Fearing for the safety of her son, Tori finally reveals the truth about Brandon's past to him.
Tori admits to Brandon that he was not adopted through an agency as he has been told in the past.
Instead, Tori explains that they found him inside the metal object 12 years ago,
after it crash landed in their farm. Brandon is enraged that his parents have been lying
to him his whole life. He runs back to the house, and tears apart the family photos,
declaring his hatred for his adopted parents.
Still enraged, Brandon pays Caitlyn another visit. He tries to explain to his frightened classmate
that he just discovered he is special. He says he wanted to see her because she's the only one
who knows how special he is. He warns Caitlyn that soon, everyone will finally know about him.
When he leaves, he gives Caitlyn an ominous threat about taking care of her mother.
After leaving, Brandon goes straight to the diner where Caitlyn's mother, Erika, works.
Now fully aware of his special abilities, Brandon torments Erika. He first maims her by breaking the
fluorescent lights on her face. He causes a glass shard to pierce her straight in the eye. Brandon
finishes her off in the diner's freezer using his newly discovered ability of laser vision.
The police are called in to investigate the crime at the diner the next day.
Although they find the place completely trashed, they are unable to find Erika's body.
She is treated as a missing person, but the police are unable to find any leads at the scene.
All they see are a series of weird symbols drawn all around the windows.
The next day, Brandon is scheduled to return to school after serving
his suspension after breaking Caitlyn's hand.
Part of the conditions for his return to class is a visit to the school's guidance counselor,
his aunt Merilee. Merilee is stern with Brandon after he displays no remorse for his past violent
behavior. Merilee tells Brandon that he leaves her with no choice but to report him to his parents.
Now, harboring resentment towards his aunt, Brandon goes on another rampage.
He breaks into their home in the middle of the night, and attacks his uncle Noah.
Brandon severely injures Noah by repeatedly hitting him with his own pick-up truck.
Noah dies in the hospital from his injuries the next day.
Back at the Breyer home, Kyle accuses Brandon of murder. Brandon retaliates by violently shoving
him away. Brandon's superhuman strength causes the kitchen cupboard to break.
When Kyle finds Brandon's blood-stained shirt hidden in his room, his suspicion is confirmed.
Resolving to take matters into his own hands, Kyle takes Brandon on a father-son hunting trip back in
the woods. Kyle plans on ending Brandon's violence and murderous rampages by killing him himself.
He attempts to shoot and kill Brandon with his hunting rifle, but his plan fails as Brandon is
seemingly indestructible. Instead, Brandon ends up executing his adoptive father by heat vision.
Meanwhile, back at the house, the police pay Tori a visit. The sheriff questions Tori about
the recent crimes that have been happening around town. Without any hard evidence to show for their
investigation, Tori dismisses the police. However, before he leaves, he shows Tori the only clue
they have. The weird symbols found around the diner and close to Noah's truck where he died.
After the police leave, Tori runs to Brandon's bedroom and rummages through his school bag.
She is horrified to find the exact same symbols the police
found on the crime scenes drawn all around her son's notebooks.
Shocked by her discovery, Tori calls Kyle's phone to warn him about Brandon, but she's too late.
To her surprise, it's Brandon who answers Kyle's phone. He tells Tori she's too late. He tells her
Kyle is dead and that he is actually on his way home. Tori is petrified, and in a panic,
calls 911. The police are promptly sent to her house just as Brandon starts breaking in.
The police arrive and are shocked to find the wreckage of the house. The police direct Tori to
find safety, but unfortunately, Brandon is too powerful. All Tori manages to do is
hide under the bed before Brandon violently kills off the police with intense violence.
In an incredible feat of adrenaline, Tori manages to run to the barn.
Thinking back on how Brandon was injured when he accidentally scraped the side
of the metal object hidden in their cellar, Tori devises a plan to stop
Brandon. She breaks off a piece of the metal and braces for a confrontation with her son.
Tori coaxes Brandon close to her. She tells him that she is his mother no matter what.
He reassures Brandon that to her eyes, he is a blessing and regardless of his actions,
she still believes that Brandon is good inside.
She tearfully hugs him, and with the metal shard in hand, she attempts to stab him on the back.
Tori's plan fails as Brandon catches her deceit. Filled with so much rage and hatred,
Brandon grabs his mother in an embrace and flies her up to space.
With a final look of pure loathing, Brandon unceremoniously drops Tori to her death.
As Brandon flies back down to earth, however, he is hit by a passenger airplane.
Due to his superhuman abilities and indestructible strength, Brandon manages to survive the crash.
The next morning, the wreckage of the plane is scattered all around the Breyer farm.
Brandon appears to be the only survivor of the grisly accident.
He is being attended to by paramedics, while news crews report about the tragedy around him.
According to reports, everyone on board the plane was killed and Brandon was the only survivor.
Then follows various news clips about a number of unexplainable events all around Brightburn.
First a report about an unidentified flying figure seen in the light of day.
Then it cuts to a report about the same strange markings found
around Brandon's crime scenes burned across a farm. In the next few clips,
there are more unexplainable events that happen like buildings collapsing
and huge fires breaking out. The reports begin shifting to a narrative about aliens.