MovieChat Forums > The Burning (1981) Discussion > The movie could have started at the 40 m...

The movie could have started at the 40 minute mark

posted 8 years ago by NESPlayer
2 replies | jump to latest

Who else thinks that the first 40 minutes were pretty unnecessary? All those general interactions in camp, that sub plot with the bully who targets the shy boy that never gets anywhere etc.

They could have just started the movie with the counsellor retelling the story. It would have worked just as well.

This was a wrong way of creating the movie anyway: Showing the real events at the start of the movie and then the counsellor telling the dramatized legend version of it was pointless. What's the deal with the whole "they never found the body" story if we, the audience, already know without a shadow of a doubt what really happened?

They should have started with the campfire story and then gone on from there. In the end, they show a flashback of the events anyway, so they could have just extended that flashback to include the full intro scene and that's it: A nice little 50 minute film.

[–] bluedionysus 8 years ago

Couldn't agree more. The Burning quickly goes downhill with the hospital & prostitute scenes... and then, with the exception of a few "Cropsy moments" here and there, becomes a mundane teen sex-comedy/drama for the following half-hour.

It's not so much the performers (who doesn't like Jason Alexander or Fisher Stevens?) - it's the script. Once we're introduced to Camp Stonewater, the story comes to a complete standstill. The best you can say for this section is that we get to know the characters fairly well. However, this could've been achieved whilst keeping the narrative on the go.

You brought up the campfire bit - I often skip to that scene and start from there! We can't be alone in this regard. The Burning has some incredible moments, of course - great effects, a truly superb (albeit underused) score by Rick Wakeman, etc.. But it's definitely weighed down by a significant amount of filler. It is, in a sense, half a movie.

[–] theblackestmagic 8 years ago

Even though it has a much more lower rating here on IMDB than 'The Burning' does, I actually find the similarly themed 'Madman' to be an all around more entertaining slasher flick with fewer dull moments contained within it. Although it certainly doesn't have such an effective, shocking and outright memorable a scene as the infamous 'raft' sequence in 'The Burning' has.

"A cynic is what an idealist calls a realist" - H.G. Wells