That is the unique take on both the superhero and horror genres provided by the film, which stars Elizabeth Banks (The Hunger Games) and David Denman (The Office) as a young married couple who, while struggling to conceive a child on their own, feel themselves blessed when one lands on their farm inside an alien vessel. At first Brandon (Jackson Dunn) seems like the perfect child and their lives couldn’t be better. But as he reaches puberty, the vessel he arrived in calls out to him — and the message is definitely not “They can be a great people…they only lack the light to show the way.” Produced by James Gunn, directed by David Yarovesky, and written by Gunn’s brother Mark and his cousin Brian, Brightburn touches on the genre that James Gunn himself has been working in most recently (with the Guardians of the Galaxy films and, next up, The Suicide Squad), while going back to his roots as a horror filmmaker. For Banks — who last worked with Gunn on his gory 2006 horror outing Slither — Brightburn also touches on notions of parenting and whether the “nature vs. nurture” question can come into play when one is raising a superbeing. “I thought this movie was very sneaky in that it addressed fears that all parents have,” says the actress and director (Charlie’s Angels). “Just this idea of like, you don’t know who your kid is going to become, you don’t know what amount of responsibility you have, nature vs. nurture…I thought this was an interesting exploration of all those ideas in this package of a superhero gone bad.” We’ll have more from director David Yarovesky, plus stars David Denman and Jackson Dunn, in the next couple of days. Brightburn is out in theaters this Friday (May 24). Don Kaye is a Los Angeles-based entertainment journalist and associate editor of Den of Geek. Other current and past outlets include Syfy, United Stations Radio Networks, Fandango, MSN, RollingStone.com and many more. Read more of his work here. Follow him on Twitter @donkaye
