"The Darkest Minds" - Review

It seems like every generation gets some iteration of the “persecuted teenagers with superpowers” genre. Whether it’s A.E. van Vogt’s Slan in the forties or Stan Lee and Jack Kirby’s X-Men in the sixties, every generation gets a superpowered metaphor for puberty, growing up, and feeling like an outsider. The Darkest Minds, based on the young adult book series by Alexandra Bracken, hopes to be another entry in the canon and the results are decidedly a mixed bag.
 
In the not too distant future, Ruby (Lidya Jewett) is a normal ten year-old … that is until children under the age of twenty start dying from a mysterious illness. Before anyone can really figure out a cure, ninety percent of the world’s kids have died, but the survivors have all inexplicably gained superpowers such as telepathy, telekinesis or the ability to control electricity. The president (Bradley Whitford) fearing the threat these kids pose implements an order to round them up and stick them in camps where they will no longer be a threat. Ruby is taken to a camp after her powers manifest, when she inadvertently erases her parents memory of her.
 
Six years later, Ruby (now played by Amandla Stenberg) is working at the camp trying to stay under the radar, using her power to manipulate memories to avoid detection. You see, Ruby is so powerful that orders are to terminate her on sight. Everything changes when a sadistic camp captain (Wade Williams) discovers her true powers. Ruby is then smuggled out of the camp by a friendly young doctor (Mandy Moore) who is working with a mysterious organization called the League. But Ruby doesn’t trust the League, and ends up on the run and eventually falls in with a group of kids – dreamy Liam (Harris Dickinson), hyper intelligent goofball Chubs (Skylan Brooks) and mute Zu (Miya Cech). They’re searching for the “Slip Kid,” a Professor X-like boy who is gathering the super powered teens and preteens in a commune in the wilderness. All the while, they are hunted by soldiers from the camp, and bounty hunters like Lady Jane (Gwendoline Christie). What then follows is your typical YA playbook of teen angst, romance and even a love triangle crops up for a bit. There’s a theme here of kids sticking together and becoming a surrogate family for the dystopian world, but it’s not explored with much depth or maturity.
 
Like a lot of YA adaptations, The Darkest Minds script, written by Chad Hodge, suffers from too much plot, not enough emotion. The film is in such a hurry to get through its plot that the emotional story suffers and falls by the wayside. So, instead of organically building emotional conflicts, everything feels forced. Particularly egregious is the love triangle that develops late in the movie. Did I say develops? More like just happens in a scene. This isn’t a problem for the first act or so, as we follow Ruby getting acclimated to this dystopia, her powers and her new friends. In the latter half of the film, the plot and action scenes overwhelm the emotional story. The film is also not helped by the fact that it is the start of a proposed trilogy – so the story is not concluded in any satisfying way in this film. On top of this, Ruby’s powers are never adequately explained as to what they do and how they work. In some scenes she can read people’s memories, in others she can wipe their memories, and in others she can mind control them. This makes her powers feel extremely convenient, changing as the plot demands.
 
All that being said, The Darkest Minds is well directed by Jennifer Yuh Nelson (in her live action directorial debut). Nelson has a clear eye for action, and her work here is particularly strong in the first two acts, where she keeps a sense of mystery and pace. When the big climatic action set piece gets into swing there’s a sense of scale that lots of movies of this type can’t pull off. It makes me hope Nelson gets better material going forward, based on her very strong work here.
 
The performances are good– Amandla Stenberg has to get much of the credit for carrying the movie and she also has the thankless role of audience surrogate with lots of exposition thrown at her, but she’s engaging enough to pull it off. Harris Dickinson is charming as the strong, emotionally vulnerable love interest. The other kids are very good, as well, particularly Skylan Brooks, who gets to be the comic relief. Mandy Moore is mostly wasted, but it seems like her character will be a bigger part of the sequel, and Gwendoline Christie continues her streak of playing badass side characters who are easily dispatched and will probably show up in the next installment.
 
The Darkest Minds could have been a classic, but it basically does exactly what you expect it to — nothing more and nothing less. The film is not helped by the fact that it’s totally unsatisfying, as it doesn’t have an ending since it hopes to establish a franchise. The film is not a complete waste of time, but not really a memorable one either.
 
Two out of Four stars.