“I’m the Bad Guy”: Child Psychopathy in Brightburn (2019)
Letterboxd user Wesley R. Ball summarizes the movie best: “We Need to Talk About Clark Kent.” Upon its release, Brightburn quickly gained renown as the Evil Superman movie. But in the current social and political climate another theme jumps out: psychopathy and children.
An oft-cited criticism of Brightburn is the fact that Brandon Breyer, a child discovering his superhuman abilities on the occasion of his twelfth birthday, never seems to have a crisis of conscience as these abilities emerge and his empathy retreats. It’s argued that this results in flat characters with weak arcs. The viewer never comes to know Brandon as the innocent child his mother mourns, only as a super-abled villain, so it’s just as difficult to empathize with any supporting character coping with the situation as it is to empathize with Brandon himself.
But this is only a flaw for the Evil Superman hopefuls. Supernatural abilities aside, Brightburn is the story of a twelve-year-old psychopath.
(Sidenote: In his incredibly compelling book Columbine, Dave Cullen explains that there is no consistently agreed-upon definition of sociopath, and that characteristics now popularly associated with sociopathy are actually more accurately aligned with psychopathy.)
In the chilling piece for New York Times Magazine “Can You Call a 9-Year-Old a Psychopath?” Jennifer Kahn investigates symptoms of and attempts at treating psychopathy in children. But for being fictional, Brandon Breyer would no doubt have been a welcome addition to Kahn’s research. Without any real knowledge of Brandon as a sympathetic character or his family as a closely-bonded unit, he appears as the terrifying enigma of the outwardly privileged psychopathic minor. The horror movie podcast Straight Chilling questions Brandon’s insistence that his aunt not contact the sheriff about him; they point out that the authorities are no threat to his new abilities, so why should their involvement matter? In reality it doesn’t, but this preoccupation illustrates Brandon’s narcissistic inability to reconcile an undesirable turn of events with his own reality. Similarly, when his mother explains that Brandon was taken from a spacecraft that crashed close to their home, Brandon reacts violently at first but is ultimately unsurprised. He tells his mother he always knew he was “superior,” another trait attributed to true psychopaths. Upon learning his uncle has died, Brandon shows no emotion; only when pressed does Brandon claim, without feeling, that he loved his uncle. In other words, Brandon has learned that this is the appropriate response to the given situation, but is unable to convey the emotion sincerely because the emotion itself is entirely absent: another indication of psychopathy.
Look no further than Rotten Tomatoes to learn many critics agree that Brightburn establishes a fascinating premise that ultimately goes nowhere. After all, at the end of the movie (INCOMING SPOILER) Brandon sits innocently snacking on cookies while a news reporter identifies him as the only survivor of a catastrophic airplane crash. Only the audience knows that Brandon himself was the cause, and there is no real resolution.
In a world obsessed with true crime, some of which is even perpetrated by legal minors, there is no consensus on how to prevent serial murders, mass shootings, and other crimes of epic proportion. The absence of consequences for Brandon’s behavior reflects a real-world inability to grapple with these issues. Whether intentional or not, the story is an effective allegory of our time: a creeping realization that even the most innocent members of society are capable of criminal acts based in psychopathy, and one big fatalistic shrug as to how to proceed from there. In the end, Brightburn depicts a dilemma far darker than the Evil Superman premise, one for which there is no kryptonite.
Ball, W. (2020). A ★★★½ review of Brightburn (2019). [online] Letterboxd.com. Available at: https://letterboxd.com/hammerbros94/film/brightburn/ [Accessed 25 Jan. 2020].
Brightburn. (2020). [DVD] Directed by D. Yarovesky. Georgia: Sony Pictures Releasing.
Cullen, D. (2010). Columbine. New York: Grand Central Publishing.
Kahn, J. (2012, May 11). Can You Call a 9-Year-Old a Psychopath? Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/13/magazine/can-you-call-a-9-year-old-a-psychopath.html
Straight Chilling (2020). #217 — Brightburn. [podcast] Straight Chilling. Available at: http://straightchillingpodcast.com/news-media/217-brightburn-2019/ [Accessed 25 Jan. 2020].
