Brightburn

A rural Kansas couple who cannot have a child finds a baby in a crashed spaceship and raises him as their son Brandon. When he turns twelve, he gains super strength, flight, and heat vision. Bullied at school and rejected by a girl he likes, he grows cruel and violent. An alien message from his ship tells him to take the world. He kills people who stand against him, including family, police, and finally his adoptive mother after she tries to stop him. The ending suggests more disasters and other powered beings ahead.

The story is not sold as a race, queer, or feminist empowerment tale. It is a dark superhero origin turned into bloody family horror about nature versus nurture, parental love, and power that arrives with puberty. Some on-screen beats echo bullying, stalking after a girl rejects him, and explosive male rage, which critics also tie to school violence ideas the writers researched. The film still blames alien programming and a sadistic power fantasy more than a pure social lecture. Institutions mainly fail as horror plot beats, not as a long speech against Western life.