Darkest Minds (2018)
Directed by Jennifer Yuh Nelson
Written by Chad Hodge
Starring Amandla Stenberg, Harris Dickinson, Mandy Moore, Bradley Whitford
Release Date August 3rd, 2018
Published August 3rd, 2018
I had really hoped that the phase of young adult dystopian drama had passed after the series of Hunger Games knock-offs tried and failed at the box office. I had a deep and abiding hope that after Maze Runner: The Death Cure, still among the worst things I have seen at the movies in 2018, had flopped into theaters I would not have to suffer another overwrought, portentous piece of young adult post-apocalyptic nonsense for a few years.
Sadly, it’s only been a few months since the pain of the most recent Maze Runner sequel began to subside and already this pathetic sub-genre is back on the big screen. Darkest Minds is the latest young adult flotsam to try and cash in on The Hunger Games in hopes of striking box office gold. Here’s hoping it fails as miserably as the rest as Darkest Minds doesn’t deserve success, it deserves to be buried in a cold wet grave.
Darkest Minds wastes the talents of young Amandla Stenberg, Rue from The Hunger Games, as Ruby, a teenager with a dark secret, the power to manipulate people’s minds. As we are told via generic news footage, teenagers across the country woke up one morning with remarkable super-powers and their parents didn’t know what to do about them. The only thing anyone could think of was to round up the kids and put them in camps to be studied or killed.
Some kids are super-smart, others have telekinesis powers and still others have the horrific power to make fire shoot from their eyes and mouths like a kid whose had too many Smoking Hot Cheetos. Ruby belongs to a dangerous group of kids given the distinction or Orange for their ability to manipulate the minds of anyone they come in contact with. Ruby can Jedi mind trick people into doing her bidding, if she can learn to control her gift.
After escaping an internment camp where she was set to be eliminated after they discover the breadth of her powers, Ruby briefly goes on the run with a freedom fighter named Kate (Mandie Moore) but when she appears to have a partner who Ruby envisions as a bad guy, Ruby runs away and finds herself in a van with a group of fellow teens with super-powers. Liam (Harris Dickman) is the leader, he has telekinesis. Chubs (Skylan Brooks) has super-intelligence and Zu (Miya Cech) can turn electricity into a weapon.
Together they will seek out a utopia headed up by a legend named the Slip Kid, nicknamed for his ability to get in and out of the camps after being repeatedly captured. Naturally, the utopia will not be all it’s cracked up to be and it will be up to our heroes to point the way toward real freedom. Or, at least, I assume what the plot of Darkest Minds is supposed to be; the film is far more clumsy in execution.
Director Jennifer Yuh Nelson makes the jump from animated features to live action with Darkest Minds and you can sense the dutiful approach to making this as if she were assigned a task and not given a creative opportunity. There is a quality of let’s just get this over with to every scene in the movie and the rushed sensibility comes through in the look of the movie and in the performances that stem from a director picking up a paycheck.
Amandla Stenberg is giving the role of Ruby her full attention but you can sense here also a dutiful if not deeply committed approach. Everyone in Darkest Minds seems to just want to get through this so they can get on with their careers in more interesting movies that aren’t mandated by the whims of a studio marketing department. You can almost hear the gleeful cry of the marketing team as they chant “Hunger Games Meets The X-Men” over and over and over as they frenzy themselves toward believing they have a hit concept on their hands.
Darkest Minds is little more than an elevator pitch brought to life and colored in with derivative characters and expository dialogue. It’s unlikely that anyone who made this movie cared about it beyond making sure it wasn’t a full-on, career killing embarrassment. That modest goal is achieved, everyone here can rest assured that what they’ve made isn’t a complete embarrassment, it’s competent and forgettable in the way that will help as these talented people move on and forget that they ever took part in this throwaway nonsense.
