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THE DARKEST MINDS
Director: Jennifer Yuh Nelson Cast: Amandla Stenberg, Harris Dickinson, Skylan Brooks, Miya Cech, Patrick Gibson, Mandy Moore, Wade Williams, Gwendoline Christie, Mark O'Brien, Wallace Langham, Bradley Whitford MPAA
Rating: Running Time: 1:45 Release Date: 8/3/18 |
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Review by Mark Dujsik | August 2, 2018 Another adaptation of a young-adult novel that seems more concerned with its sequels than itself, The Darkest Minds gives us yet another dystopian vision of the future, another group of teenage rebels, another half-baked romance, another vast conspiracy, and a whole lot of other elements that now feel like requirements instead of an attempt to tell a decent story. The gimmick here involves a plague, but even that, as I check my memory on previous movies of this ilk, has been done before. To be fair, the result of the plague is slightly unique. It targets children specifically, and the result of the apparent illness is either death or the imbuing of the survivor with a convenient list of one of five superpowers. To further help with the convenience of this consequence, the government has made a color-coded chart to help identify the kids with those powers more easily. Children who are denoted as "Greens," the "weakest" of the bunch, have super-human intelligence. "Blues" are capable of telepathy, and "Golds" have the ability to control electricity. The final two categories are "Oranges," who can read and control minds, and "Reds," allegedly the most dangerous of the bunch, whose abilities are kept a secret until the climax. The Reds' power is kind of impressive, but the government may have made a severe miscalculation in the rankings, considering that Oranges are capable of convincing a person to do anything—including commit suicide—with a single thought. Maybe they'll readjust the Oranges' placement on that chart in the sequel. A sequel or two, indeed, seem to weigh heavily on the mind of screenwriter Chad Hodge. It's tough to blame him, considering that this is an adaptation of the first novel of Alexandra Bracken's trilogy of books (not to mention a collection of three novellas that, apparently, have little to do with the main story). With the background to this movie's creation, we have yet another trend: a single story that feels more like the first act of a bigger narrative than a self-contained story. Just about everything here is in the service of exposition. We learn about the sudden spread of a disease, given a ridiculously long medical name, across the United States—maybe even the whole world, although the movie doesn't really clarify. Some kids die, and those who survive with those superpowers are rounded up and sent to government-run camps. We learn that the economy has collapsed because there are no more children (No, you figure that one out), and adults have mostly fled to the cities (except for the parents of the main character, who seem to be doing just fine maintaining a middle-class home in a small town in the middle of a veritable wasteland, despite the previously established facts). The story proper follows Ruby (Amandla Stenberg), an Orange who has hidden her abilities to save herself from immediate execution. After six years of living in a camp, the 16-year-old Ruby is rescued by Cate (Mandy Moore), the member of a resistance force called the League, in a daringly dumb escape plan that still, somehow, works. Thinking that the League is up to no good, Ruby escapes Cate and is rescued by a trio of super-powered teens (not before being given a Chekhov-brand tracking device). She later has to escape and be rescued from another place, just in case one might be thinking that the story might evolve as it goes. Conveniently, each of the trio fits into one of the color-coded categories beneath Ruby's. Liam (Harris Dickinson) is a Blue and becomes Ruby's inevitable—and inevitably tragic—love interest. Chubs (Skylan Brooks) is a Green and the supposed comic relief. The silent Zu (Miya Cech) is a Gold and, well, nothing more. They've been driving down highways, looking for a rumored haven for runaways from the camps and avoiding bounty hunters (called "tracers," because another one of the constants of these stories is that everything in these worlds has to have a quirky name). Whatever plot is here is primarily an excuse to explain as much exposition as possible. That the workings of this world don't make much sense, even in terms of fantastical dystopian fiction, means that we're left trying to cling to anything that does make sense. Unfortunately, none of the characters of The Darkest Minds has a life beyond the plot or a personality beyond their pre-ordained roles within that plot. By the end, a vast and quite silly conspiracy (involving an apparent government coup orchestrated by the movie's not-so-secret villain) has revealed itself, meaning that this movie's story will begin when—or if—we get the next installment. Copyright © 2018 by Mark Dujsik. All rights reserved. |
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(for violence including disturbing images, and thematic elements)
