Movie review: Firestarter 2: Rekindled – 2002

Charlie, the girl with pyrokinetic abilities to light fires with thought, has grown up in hiding resulting from Rainbird’s desire to use her as the ultimate weapon and his views that she is a God. Years later Rainbird has matured into a child psychologist and entrenched himself at a weapons development lab where he has continued his experiments with mind altering drugs and the Lot series of tests. Now with a small army of young boys who have various extreme psychological abilities an unknowing employee of his, Vincent, has located Charlie and Rainbird wants her back!

Marguerite Moreau (Charlie), Malcolm McDowell (Rainbird), Dennis Hopper (Richardson), Danny Nucci (Vincent), Darnell Williams (Gil).

Although this wasn’t exactly billed as a continuation of the Stephen King story and the original film, the expectation is that it would be. It wasn’t however, as this film rewrote some of the original story to support the plot. That would be fine as this was a well done film but it was disappointing that the flashbacks used to outline the original story weren’t clips from the original film but were actually remade. At that point this film ceased to be a sequel.

As a stand-alone film, this is very good. At almost 3 hours, the plot background and character development are wonderful and make for good emotional investment. The plot in this film was well done despite deviance and conflict with the original story. I was disappointed that Gil and Rainbird weren’t as menacing as in either the book or the original film but, I did enjoy the addition of Vincent and more involvement of Richardson. Moreau made a very good Charlie and as a bonus, is very easy on the eyes.

Acting, dialogue, sets and camera work were well done throughout. Special effects weren’t incredible but were consistent with the story and fit the film perfectly.

This was a made for TV series so other than a couple of questionable intimate scenes, this one can be viewed by preens and above. One does not need to see the original to enjoy this film either so put this one about the middle of your Must See list.

Released: 2002
Reviewed: 2.23.16
Star rating: 4 out of 5
Genre: Horror, Supernatural Horror, TV movies, Sci-Fi, Thriller

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