3 out of 5

Director: Carlos Brooks

It commits some pretty egregious cinematic sins (forced close-ups, obvious last minute reveals), but Burning Bright is a fun little thriller, bolstered by the original hook of its story. Take your cat-and-mouse killer-and-prey tale and make the killer a tiger. That pretty much summarizes the story here. Upping the ante are the following: a hurricane; a boarded up house in which our killer and prey (Briana Evigan playing Kelly) are secluded; and an ‘innocent’ in constant danger – Kelly’s brother – thanks to his autism making him seemingly unable to connect tiger with danger. The film comes up with plausible enough reasons for bringing the tiger here, but the success is mostly from how things are kept moving. You can only do the “I’m being quiet and hiding” maneuver so many times in a flick, so Carlos Brooks wisely uses a really great version of it right away and then has our lead constantly moving around the house, chasing her brother, coming up with new ways to confuse the beast. Her attempts to escape also feel legitimate, as do her fumblings with the various weapons she arms herself with. Brooks does get a little silly with some made-for-TV style camera moves, but overall there’s a respectable blend of live tiger action mixed in here, with CGI just peeking around the corners. As mentioned, it is a little silly overall, the whole justification of “why” this happens and the reveal at the end not really necessary or up to snuff, but kudos for committing to a new spin on the genre.