There is a Superman comic that wonders, “What if Superman was a communist.” Instead of landing in a cornfield in Kansas and being adopted by the wholesome Kent family baby Superman instead lands in Russia. In this version, Superman is still essentially a good man, a superhero of sorts, but his ideology is warped by 1980s Russian politics.

Brightburn keeps the idyllic Kansas setting but imagines “What if Superman was evil.” Technically it isn’t Superman, or even Clark Kent, he’s called Brandon here and he’s played by Jackson A. Dunn, but he is an alien baby that lands on a farm in Kansas and is raised by a wholesome couple. Superman’s origin story is so ingrained into our cultural membranes that those images immediately bring him to mind.

The film skips any scenes on the kid’s alien planet. It flashes pretty quickly through the growing-up stage. The couple, Tori (Elizabeth Banks) and Kyle Breyer (David Denman) have been able to conceive a child on their own so they are thrilled when a baby lands in their lap (even if he does crash in a spaceship). A quick montage brings us to him turning 13 and hitting puberty.

He’s an awkward kid, but smart. He thoroughly answers the teacher’s questions and is mocked by some bullies. But a pretty girl turns to him and says that smart people rule the world.

The spaceship, locked inside the barn, calls to him. It tells him he can rule this world. His powers come slowly. When that pretty girl later calls him a pervert (because she caught him spying on her in her bedroom) he breaks her hand.

Then he starts killing people. His parents are slow to recognize the signs. They love him after all. But when the bodies start piling up even they have to realize their son is evil.

There are some great ideas in Brighburn. I love the premise, but it sticks very few of its landings. There is no real sense of who he is, or where he comes from. The ship communicates to him somehow and tells him he can control this planet, but why? Was he sent there for that purpose? There isn’t any real internal conflict either. Sometimes he seems like a good boy who loves his family, and then something angers him and he starts killing.

You could read this as a metaphor for puberty and well, as someone who is raising a teenage daughter right now I can tell you the moods do swing for no apparent reason, and maybe that is enough here. But it didn’t work for me.

Most of the choices the film makes are pedestrian. Even the ones that don’t do what a typical superhero film would do are easily guessed at. So many times I wished the film would do something really surprising with its premise, and it never did.

Except for the kills. Those were pretty gnarly.

It isn’t a terrible film, it just isn’t as good as it could have been. That’s disappointing.