Firestarter - Official Clip (2022) Zac Efron, Sydney Lemmon, Stephen King

Firestarter will be released on Digital on June 12 and on Blu-rayandDVD on June 28 via Universal. Produced by Blumhouse, the 2022 horror film is based on Stephen King’s 1980 novel, which was previously adapted into a film in 1984.

Keith Thomas (The Vigil) directs from a script by Scott Teems (Halloween Kills). Zac Efron, Ryan Kiera Armstrong, Sydney Lemmon, Kurtwood Smith, John Beasley, Michael Greyeyes, and Gloria Reuben star. John Carpenter, Cody Carpenter, & Daniel Davies (Halloween) composed the score.

Special features, including an alternate ending, are listed below.

Special features:

• Audio commentary by director Keith Thomas
• A Kinetic Energy - Featurette with director Keith Thomas and actors Zac Efron and Ryan Kiera Armstrong
• Spark a Fire - Featurette on how the story was adapted from the novel
• Igniting Firestarter - Featurette on fire effects
• Power Struggle - Featurette on stunts and practical effects
• Alternate ending
• 7 deleted and extended scenes
• Gag reel

For more than a decade, parents Andy (Zac Efron) and Vicky (Sydney Lemmon) have been on the run, desperate to hide their daughter Charlie (Ryan Kiera Armstrong) from a shadowy federal agency that wants to harness her unprecedented gift for creating fire into a weapon of mass destruction.

Andy has taught Charlie how to defuse her power, which is triggered by anger or pain. But as Charlie turns 11, the fire becomes harder and harder to control. After an incident reveals the family’s location, a mysterious operative (Michael Greyeyes) is deployed to hunt down the family and seize Charlie once and for all. Charlie has other plans.

Pre-order Firestarter.

Firestarter(2022)

This is a Movie Health Community evaluation. It is intended to inform people of potential health hazards in movies and does not reflect the quality of the film itself. The information presented here has not been reviewed by any medical professionals.

Firestarter has its most severe strobe effects within the first 10 minutes of the film. This starts with brief strobe effects in the second production company logo (immediately following the Universal logo), and continues with a montage shown on an old-fashioned TV screen with an intermittently moderate and severe flicker, and features several rapidly-changing images. This montage shows both important backstory and the opening credits of the film. Throughout the rest of the film, there are scenes of minor flickering of fire as the only source of light. 

All of the camera work in this film is either stationary or very smooth. The wavy effect of extreme heat is shown several times in this film.

Flashing Lights: 8/10. Motion Sickness: 1/10.

TRIGGER WARNING: Multiple scenes show extremely graphic burn injuries. One animal dies slowly and painfully. A brief moment shows a graphic frog dissection. There is some aggressive schoolyard bullying.

Image ID: A theatrical poster for Firestarter(2022)