We’ve devolved to a point in our paranoid history where remaking a movie about an off-the-grid government agency that knowingly employs a pedophiliac child killer to do its bidding could almost be as fresh as today’s headlines. Stephen King’s John Rainbird was such a man, but when it came time to trace the good-enough-as-is 1984 version, Blumhouse sophomore Keith Thomas delivers a Rainbird (Michael Greyeyes) who’s more or less another tatted and muscled variation on Max Cady, this one predictably pulled out of retirement for one last hit. Little Drew Barrymore’s performance in the original was laughable; the wind machine did most of the emoting. Ryan Kiera Armstrong instills in Charlie a consistent sense of dread. (For a film that does its best to shake off its campy origins, we could have lived without the punctuating zing of “Liar, liar your pants on fire.”) As for Zac Efron’s father figure, a crick of the neck was all he packed in his acting bag of tricks. So why the need for a facelift? Nefarious Captain Hollister (Gloria Reuben) pegged it when she dubbed the spontaneously combustive teen, “A real-life superhero.” A comic book movie by any other name and with a wet fuse, no less. (2022) — Scott Marks
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