I write a blind about the former A list Disney actor turned A- list adult actor and his use of steroids and loves of plastic surgery procedures and the next day the publicist says he is ill which is responsible.

Uh huh.

Zac Efron


‘Firestarter’ Is a Sign That Zac Efron Needs to Call His Agent. Immediately.

In a generic house in a featureless town in an unidentified location, Andy (Efron) and Vicky (Sydney Lemmon) are living with their daughter Charlie (Ryan Kiera Armstrong), who’s anything but normal, as evidenced by an opening dream sequence in which an infant Charlie sets fire to her crib—and then her own head! Andy wakes from this reverie shaken, and subsequently finds his daughter playing with a zippo lighter in the dark in their kitchen. She talks about how “something feels weird in my body,” meaning her capacity for shooting flames out of her torso (aka “the bad thing”). Andy reminds her that when that uncontrollable sensation washes over her, she should calm herself by focusing on everyday objects in her line of her sight. Once Vicky appears, he offers to make them all pancakes, although because Efron can’t sell himself as a dad (even with a perfunctory beard), this gesture of loving fatherhood comes off as laughably inauthentic.

To say that nothing happens in Firestarter is an understatement; rarely has a film taken fewer narrative steps than this one, all while simultaneously indulging in nothing but expository dialogue. Scott Teems’ script is so leaden and inert that Thomas and his cast are helpless to inject any momentum or vitality into the proceedings. The few stabs at jolt-scares are pitifully ineffective; the death scenes are bloodless and unimaginative; and the fire effects are chintzy and underwhelming. Pictures fly off the walls, Efron bleeds from the eyes (a consequence of employing his “push” powers) and Charlie eventually hones and controls her gift, but Teems’ screenplay is a sluggish affair that eschews the on-the-run propulsion of King’s novel, which was its main (sole?) asset.

Worse, Firestarter boasts a familiar-sounding synth score from horror legend John Carpenter that, when married to late shots of Charlie riding around suburbia on a bike in a hooded sweatshirt, tips things into regurgitation-of-a-regurgitation territory, as if the film were now deliberately echoing Stranger Things’ knock-off take on Firestarter and its supernatural/sci-fi 1980s ilk. A closing shot that ends with Carpenter’s sub-Halloween theme playing over red-font closing credits brazenly strives to stroke that nostalgic sweet spot, but by that point in this purposeless retread, the only thing one feels is relief that it’s over.- Source

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