The Darkest Minds

Beautiful Creatures, City Of Ember, I Am Number 4, The 5th Wave, The Mortal Instruments : City of Bones, Eragon, The Seeker : The Dark Is Rising & Ender's Game. What do they all have in common? They are all films that have been made, released and failed financially in the last 10 years or so. All 8 are based on books and all are aimed towards a teenage audience. All 8 are also the first films in failed franchises created in the wake of the Harry Potter, Twilight and The Hunger Games series.Those 3 raked in the cash, becoming multi billion dollar properties. The others didn't. And now The Darkest Minds is yet another in a long line of failures.

The children of Earth are dying. A mysterious pandemic has wiped them out in their billions. After a few months 98% of those under 18 are gone and the remaining 2% have developed psychic powers that terrify the adults. The surviving kids are rounded up to be put into camps and are segregated depending on the strength of their powers. However one girl called Ruby escapes with the help of anti government rebels and goes on the run. On the way she meets and befriends others like her.

This had the seeds of an interesting film but the rush to turn it into a money making machine kills it in its tracks. Characters and storylines are barely introduced before vanishing just as fast, bucket loads of exposition is dropped on us, ideas fly left, right and centre, relationships are rushed, everything clashing together in a mad dash to create a universe instead of letting things breathe and grow organically. It's a dizzying watch and not in a good way. For example one well known face from a much loved TV show turns up and gets maybe 60 seconds screen time before she literally walks off into the woods. If you don't recognise her you wouldn't be blamed for thinking "What the hell is that all about?" but you know the writer's plan is for her to reappear in a surprise moment in the sequel (which won't be happening). It all has such a bang of money making cynicism off it that leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

Which is annoying because as mentioned it's an interesting and very dark way to start a story. 98% of the world's kids gone in a flash. TV's The Leftover's only took 2% of the world's population and look how that turned out. In this the remaining 2% have dangerous psychic powers. This could have been a post apocalyptic teenage take on Scanners. But no, it's a humdrum road movie with predictable story beats and a soppy love story jammed in for good measure. It's jarringly choppy too with some moments seemingly coming from nowhere and huge questions going unanswered. You get the feeling a longer and maybe better film is out there somewhere but we'll probably never know now.

One area where it's a success is it's casting. The Fast & The Furious franchise aside this as as inclusive as ensemble films get. The lead (Ruby) is a young Black woman and her sidekicks Chubs, Zu and Liam are Black, Asian and White respectively. Amandla Stenberg as Ruby does well with the material given her but never gets to stretch herself. Harris Dickinson as Liam is very forgettable but Skylan Brooks and Miya Cech as Zu and Chubs add a small touch of fun to proceedings. Ruby was white in the books but changing her race for the film is an interesting choice and adds a racial dynamic to the earlier segments of the film especially with all the bad guys being white including Irish actor Patrick Gibson who isn't bad in his part. It's here the film is at it's best if you can call it that. Scenes of children caged and beaten bring to mind scarily similar real life scenes on the US/Mexican border and if you watch closely you can see a negative nod towards anti-vaxxers knocking around as well. It's a topical way to open the film but any good will created by it soon flitters away.

Don't bother with this unless you've read the books. You'll get nothing from it. If you want a bit of dystopian teenage melodrama revisit The Hunger Games instead. Even the worst installment of that is better than this.