The Darkest Minds

Starring: Amandla Stenberg, Mandy Moore, Bradley Whitford, Harris Dickinson, Patrick Gibson, Skylan Brooks, Miya Cech, Gwendoline Christie, Wade Williams, Mark O'Brien, Lidya Jewett
Directed by: Jennifer Yuh Nelson
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Action, Adventure, Drama
2018

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: A disease kills nearly all children, and the survivors develop special powers. A small group of teenagers band together to face a government determined to control the threat by any means necessary.

Review:

Tim: The Darkest Minds is yet another attempt to kick start a new Young Adult franchise, but the film is pretty much dead on arrival. This isn't a terrible movie, but it's a completely lackluster one. It's eminently forgettable. It feels like this film examined all the reasons why YA movies have failed in the last decade and put all those flaws into one movie. I can't say I hated the film, but this is an obvious failure and I'd be shocked if we saw a sequel.

The set up for the film never made all that much sense. There's some disease that kills almost all the children in the world and the ones who live somehow obtain special powers. I never fully understood if the powers were supposed to be all different (like they were ripping off the mutant abilities of the X-Men), or if each category of people got the same abilities. That latter answer feels like the right one, but it doesn't make a whole lot of logical sense. The film tries to set up this caste system of colors to separate the different children (which reminded me of Divergent), but this never made sense to me, either. Perhaps I just wasn't following, but Orange is the most dangerous color, while red comes next. It just felt like an illogical flow and it was never portrayed all that memorably. I couldn't tell you the difference between greens and blues because it truly wasn't interesting enough to stay in my memory. The government proceeds to enslave or murder many of the remaining children and apparently most of the country was just cool with this. Sure, there might have been a faction here or there, but the whole thing felt like such an absurd set up to the story that it was hard to take anything in the film seriously. Truly, it made so little sense. Now, maybe something just got lost in translation from the novel upon which this was adapted, but I can't say I saw a single thing in this movie that suggested the novel would be worth reading.

The cast felt like it was assembled with a serious, strict budget in mind. Amanda Stenberg wasn't bad, but she didn't show a single thing that would suggest she has movie star potential. The biggest attraction of Stenberg was the, "Wait, is that Rue?" moment as I iMDB'd her. It even felt like this film tried to copy The Hunger Games by casting her. Mandy Moore had a small supporting role and she was okay, although I never fully understood her character, her motivation, or how I was supposed to feel about her. Harris Dickinson was fine, but it felt like his talent level wasn't up to what the part required. He was serviceable and didn't detract from the film, but it was hard to feel good about his performance. I was excited to see Bradley Whitford and them dismayed when he disappeared and did almost nothing in the film. Patrick Gibson chewed some scenery and was mostly okay. Skylan Brooks brought some comedic relief, but never made the type of impact on the film that everyone seemed to suspect he would. Mita Cech adds surprisingly little to the film. I was excited to see Gwendoline Christie, but like Whitford, her talent is grossly wasted. Really, the cast was underwhelming.

I have to place a lot of the blame here on Jennifer Yuh Nelson. This isn't her first directing gig, but it's the first live action feature film she's directed. Her inexperience shows. This is a deeply flawed movie from the first scene to the last one. She doesn't do a great job of directing this movie, that is clear. However, I also have to place blame on the script and likely the source material. Nelson might have done a poor job directing this film, but I don't think she had all that much to work with. The film is clearly a ripoff of much better YA films and it never does anything to escape from their shadow. The story even ends by setting up the sequel, which will likely never come.

Any way you look at it, The Darkest Minds is a failure. It's not terrible, but there's so little to get excited about here. This is a movie that you could easily pass up and I promise, you will have missed nothing. It's the kind of film I'll utterly forget in a few months.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 6



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: The Hunger Games, Divergent