Burning Bright (2010)

With a simple set up and a threadbare plot about a sister and brother trapped in a boarded up house while a Tiger stalks them often would sound like a Sci-Fi film of the week. Surprisingly, however, the film actually recalls the best of the Man-Vs-Killing Machine flicks such as Duel.

Duel used its simple premise as a means of catapulting its flawed character into a life or death situation. In that film the character played by Dennis Weaver was depicted as someone who had problems standing up against threatening forces ( a scene at the beginning in the film reveals that he did not come to his wife's aid during a time that many significant others would.) The semi-truck in that sense is just as much a symbol of terror than it is depicted as an obstacle that needs to be overcome in this passive guy's life. It had shades of Ernest Hemingway, as what is the point of living if you cannot take action and fight for what you believe in.

With that said, this is comparable in a sense to Burning Bright, a film that is just as much about a ravenous tiger, as it is about the Kelly (the sister) overcoming the troubles in her life, namely her stepfather. It is also about her gaining the means to take care of her beloved autistic brother no matter the cost. The film is full of morality and sibling love, sometimes played in a mushy-gushy way, but the tenders scenes still come off as realistically sensible and poignant.

Burning Bright, alike that Spielberg semi-truck flick, may be often repetitive, yet it also displays Director Carlos Brooks knack for orchestrating fine suspense scenes. One scene has the heroine hiding in a laundry shoot while the predator sniffs her out below, and even if the viewer knows that everything will turn out alright for the sympathetic characters in peril, Brooks knows how to build the tension enough so even if the viewer knows she will escape her predicament, they are not quite sure how. Thus suspense through anticipation is initiated.

The beginning half hour of the film shows the underlying emotional resonance between brother and sister, both in good and bad lights, albeit sympathetic and natural. We care for the sister when we learn she has to take care of her autistic brother, despite their mother's death and the uncaring, greedy manner of their stepfather.

Although the end of the film is obvious and packages everything a little too neatly, including a half-baked twist to a plot point concerning the mother that was unneeded , Burning Bright makes you keep watching despite there not being much to it. For that, one can certainly appreciate it.