BURNING BRIGHT has one of the silliest premises I've ever heard of. A girl and her young, autistic brother are trapped in a house with a tiger on the loose. There's no further set-up than that; this is minimalist film-making at its finest, and no attempt is made to make the premise believable in any way, shape or form. It's as though the writers wanted to make a typical horror film but decided to avoid having the usual psychotic killer as the antagonist, so just threw in a tiger instead. Complete nonsense, and they know it. Still, director Carlos Brooks works hard at keeping the suspense levels high, and Briana Evigan is a sweatily effective heroine dressed in the inevitable form-fitting clothes. Hardly high art.
Saying that, the film does turn out to be serviceable enough, eliciting plenty of thrills from the tiger-on-the-loose premise. There's cinematic sleight-of-hand at work here which sees the tiger come into VERY close proximity with the two actors involved, and only occasionally do the special effects get dodgy. Instead there's lots of creeping around and inventive scrapes; imagine DIE HARD with Bruce trapped in a small house instead of a tower block and with big cats instead of Germans. This is a literal cat-and-mouse thriller.
Saying that, the film does turn out to be serviceable enough, eliciting plenty of thrills from the tiger-on-the-loose premise. There's cinematic sleight-of-hand at work here which sees the tiger come into VERY close proximity with the two actors involved, and only occasionally do the special effects get dodgy. Instead there's lots of creeping around and inventive scrapes; imagine DIE HARD with Bruce trapped in a small house instead of a tower block and with big cats instead of Germans. This is a literal cat-and-mouse thriller.