Burning Bright is a 2010 natural horror/thriller/survival film, starring Briana Evigan, Charlie Tahan, and Garret Dillahunt. It tells the story of a young woman and her autistic brother's struggle to survive the night in their home after discovering they are trapped inside it with a ravenous tiger during a hurricane.
Plot[]
Johnny Gavenue, a man starting a safari park at his home, meets with Howe, a circus operator, to buy a bengal tiger as the star attraction of his park. At first he doesn't think its a scary animal, but Howe changes his mind by revealing the reason he willing to sell the tiger, declaring it was evil. Meanwhile, his stepdaguhter, Kelly Taylor, takes her brother, Tom, an autistic 8-year-old boy, to a special institution for his care ,as shes preparing to go to college. However, her check is rejected due to lack of funds, which her banker reveals to have been because Gavenue withdrew all the money from her account. When he gets back, Gavenue has workers, all illegal Mexican immigrants, board up the place and when Taylor confronts him on this, he tells her there is no money left as he spent it all on a tiger. She calls her college professor and asks to deffer her scholarship into the second semester but, with sympathy, he tells her that will not possible, as shes done so twice already and that she'd have to start that semester or lose it. Later that night, she put Tom to bed and beds down herself, dreaming that she kills her brother so she won't have to care for him anymore. Meanwhile, Gavenue rolls the cage up to the house and purposely lets Lucifer, the tiger, loose inside to kill them. When she wakes up, Taylor gets a glass of water, being terrorfied to see Lucifer from the stairs on the way back. As she had thrown her phone down the shoot in her pants, Taylor is forced to go down after it, failing to get in touch with anyone with 911, and Gavenue was in a bar with his phone in the car. Fleeing from the tiger when she exits, she makes a circle and grabs a butcher knife, before returning and trying to beat the board on the laundry roon windown down, alerting Lucifer. When the tiger starts to break in, Taylor climbs into the shoot, dropping her phone and leaving her knife behind. As she sweats immensely, a drop falls to the floor, and Lucifer looks up in at her, attempting to grab her, Taylor barely managing to climb back up it.
Finding Tom waiting in her bathroom, the two go to Gavenue's room to try and use the computer, but the internet's out due to the hurricane happening outside. As the tiger starts to break down the door, they hide under the bed and barely escape into the next room, but shes not able to break down the board on the front door. In the kitchen, she provides candy for Tom when he demands breakfast and stuffs sleeping pills into red meat to try and drug the tiger. Fleeing with Tom again when the tiger approaches, they head to their dead mother's room, hiding in the closet, only for the tiger to break inside and try to get to them. Though she smashes a hole through the wall for them, Taylor is clawed following Tom out. They take refuge in their stepfather's office, where she finds a gun and four bullets, as well as evidence of what their stepfather had done by discovering he'd had them taken off of his life insurance. As they exit to go to the laundry room, they are separated, and Taylor tries to shoot the tiger when he passes by, but the chamber was empty. Falling back into the laundry room, she blocks the doorway and manages to smash through the board, but finds herself unable to leave her brother behind, and so goes back and finds him in their mother's room, where she promises they will stay together from then on. On their way back, she prepares a torch to hold back Lucifer and shoots him in the head with the last bullet, but he lives, forcing them to shut themselves inside the new freezer, where she hums him to sleep. The next morning, the sound of drills awake them, which turns out to be Gavenue unsealing the front door. Finding him with a rifle, Taylor tells him he can let them go, things being in his favor, only for him to reveal their mother was going to leave him, her figuring out he killed her and made it look like suicide. Lucifer then leaps on and injures Gavenue, dragging back and killing him, allowing Taylor and Tom to leave the house as he devours their stepfather. They then leave together.