Because all issues Stephen King by no means exit of fashion—and since popular culture by no means tires of tales revolving round children with spooky powers—there’s a brand new Firestarter film arriving in May. With that in thoughts, we figured now was pretty much as good a time as any to hop within the rewind machine and watch tiny Drew Barrymore begin infernos together with her thoughts.

And we do imply tiny. Made simply two years after her precocious breakout as Elliott’s little sis in E.T. The Extraterrestrial, Firestarter stars an eight-year-old Barrymore because the reluctant pyro-kinetic Charlie McGee. In the forthcoming remake, the character’s age is bumped as much as 11, including a few essential years that allow her to be a tween able to embracing her sinister powers, which is what the movie’s trailer suggests will occur. (The trailer additionally comprises the phrase “superhero,” an idea which by no means comes up within the 1984 movie, even if Charlie’s powers have a decidedly X-Men high quality.)

By distinction, the Barrymore movie—which is directed by Mark L. Lester, whose different credit embrace the Arnold Schwarzenegger-starring Commando, which oddly sufficient has some thematic parallels, and the Linda Blair-starring Roller Boogie, which doesn’t—is extremely melancholy. It is the story of a tragic little lady born with a damaging “gift” that’s ruined her younger life, and who desires of nothing greater than being a standard child like everybody else.

Naturally, there are villains galore, as if Charlie and her dad, Andy (David Keith, giving off secondhand Kurt Russell vibes), weren’t already sympathetic sufficient. The first is the physician (Freddie Jones) who runs a dicey experiment testing the mysterious “lot six,” which we quickly be taught is a “pituitary extract, a powerful painkiller hallucinogen” discovered to be “responsible for the occasional flashes of psi-ability.” This train in pseudoscience is the place broke college students Andy and Vicky (Heather Locklear) meet, and the place Andy turns into able to “mental domination”—mainly, he can grimace, clutch his temples, and pressure individuals to no matter he desires. Despite the truth that “the Shop,” the sinister authorities department behind all this, is consistently hovering round, Andy and Vicky (who’s telepathic) marry and produce Charlie, whose innate “psi-abilities” develop into so worrisomely highly effective that Vicky is murdered and Charlie and Andy are pressured to go on the run.

Frankly, it was scarier when Stephen King made the heroine of Carrie a telekinetic for no purpose in any respect—and gave her high-school angst to cope with on prime of that—however Firestarter leans extra sci-fi than horror, and the movie is generally constructed round scenes that construct as much as Charlie having a purpose to start out combusting stuff. It’s repetitive but visually arresting, as Barrymore’s hair blows again, her eyes widen, and each grownup round her begins to sweat profusely and panic.

But regardless that we’re informed Charlie’s already alarming powers will exponentially enhance, to the extent of permitting her to “crack the planet in two like a china plate in a shooting gallery,” the threats towards the McGees really feel extremely scaled down. There’s Captain Hollister (Martin Sheen), who controls the Shop’s brokers—a military of suit-wearing, sedan-driving goons who chase after Charlie and her dad—and virtually smacks his lips imagining that her powers might be weaponized on behalf of the United States. Once he captures Charlie and separates her from Andy, he’s thrilled to only shut her in a room and watch in awe as she conjures flames.

Far extra distressing is George C. Scott’s character, Shop “exterminator” John Rainbird, who manipulates the frightened lady into trusting him whereas harboring a repulsively detailed want to homicide her—or “dispose of her,” as he tells Hollister—by way of a karate chop to her mind, an act he hopes will permit him to dip his fangs into “a force that belongs only to the gods themselves” as she dies. It’s chilling as hell; Charlie can see proper by means of Hollister’s shifty declaration that he’s “begun to think of you as my own daughter,” however she’s susceptible round Rainbird, who presents himself as a innocent, grandfatherly kind who confides his personal fears in her and takes her on horseback rides.

Though Firestarter’s manufacturing values usually really feel simply barely north of a made-for-TV film—that haunting Tangerine Dream rating apart, in fact—it has a forged full of huge names; moreover Sheen and Scott, Scott’s fellow Oscar winners Louise Fletcher and Art Carney pop up as a Norma and Irv, a farm-dwelling couple who present kindness to Andy and Charlie. (Even with these huge names, solely Scott’s over-the-top monster, full with evil ‘80s guy ponytail, makes any impression.) Mostly Firestarter rests on the shoulders of Barrymore, who feels like a real kid throughout—whether she’s having a whiny tantrum, excitedly greeting her beloved daddy, or stone-cold informing Irv “You don’t need your gun” when the Shop discovers their hiding place.

Anyone who’s conscious of Firestarter remembers the climactic scene when Charlie lastly will get her hard-earned revenge on the Shop’s personnel and its mansion headquarters (it’s a must to think about that so many stunt individuals bought work on this film). The story might’ve ended there, with that operatically fiery catharsis. Or it might have given us one final fright, the best way Carrie does. But the final scene is Charlie and Irv striding into the New York Times workplace, sure within the information that Charlie’s story of terror, as soon as rendered in newsprint, shall be sufficient to cease the federal government from ever once more remodeling individuals into strolling nuclear bombs. It’s an ending that matches the film’s curiously small-scale really feel, and it’s wholesomely optimistic in a approach that solely a film made in a time earlier than social media and 24-hour information and a relentless cultural dedication to shock worth might be. There’s no approach the brand new film will finish that approach, will it?

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