Given events of the past several months, if someone had told me I'd be watching a movie about children being corralled and sent to camps as a piece of entertainment, I would have said that would make me a wee bit queasy.
Wednesday provided a queasy night in the theater for that very reason with "The Darkest Minds." The feeling lasts only a few moments, still it's there, and then it's replaced by the sense that the movie, based on a young adult dystopian novel written by Alexandra Bracken, is something we've seen before in "X-Men" and several other films with YA sci-fi roots.
Where does it lie on the spectrum? Somewhere between the second and third "Hunger Games" films. In other words: meh.
Coincidentally, it stars Amandla Stenberg, who played Rue in the first "Hunger Games" film. She's given infinitely more to do in this story of children who acquire superpowers after a disease kills off a significant portion of young people.
Of course, they're labeled "different" and they are feared by the powers that be, who come up with the brilliant idea to put them in internment camps. That includes Sternberg's Ruby, one of the most powerful mutants, who are ranked by color on a spectrum from blue to red _ red being the most powerful and dangerous, with orange close behind. Ruby is orange.
That status makes her valuable and after those who run the internment camp discover her strength, they plan to kill her. She is sprung by Cate (Mandy Moore), a camp doctor she's not sure she can trust, forcing her to go on the lam.
She soon meets Liam (Harris Dickinson), Zu (Miya Cech) and Chubs (Skylan Brooks), who are in search of a mutant paradise led by a child messiah. They welcome her to the group as they continue their trek. When they find their slice of heaven, they learn things are not necessarily what they seem.
Very little about "The Darkest Minds" proves original. It's an allegory about tolerance and racism that wears its cynicism on its sleeve, which will work great for most audience members younger than 30.
Had director Jennifer Yuh Nelson had a better script _ or overall story, for that matter _ that aspect of the narrative could have been more compelling. The problem with that and many other aspects of the story is its overall predictability.
Couple that with the fact the cast's performances are hit and miss _ Stenberg is compelling _ and "The Darkest Minds" joins what's become a rather sizeable club in this fairly recent subgenre, in which good intentions are limited by execution.
