The Darkest Minds is an adaptation of a dystopian young adult novel about children suddenly acquiring powers, and the government responds by imprisoning all children. Ruby, played by Amandla Stenberg, tries to survive this fascist world and find her place in it.
The Darkest Minds had a great preview, looked like a X-Men movie without the baggage of the franchise and featured a black teen girl protagonist so I wanted to see it in theaters. I thought of it as the unofficial sequel to a not so great movie called The Recall, which suddenly came alive at the end. I prioritized a ton of documentaries, Far From The Tree, McQueen, Dark Money and Generation Wealth, which I hated, and solid independent films, including BlacKkKlansman, Puzzle and Blindspotting, which I did not enjoy, over this summer popcorn movie because I figured that it would be playing in theaters for longer than the other movies. I was wrong. Theaters saved me by yanking it from the most desirable ones and leaving it in the ones that are less appealing after its opening week. Word of mouth on the movie was dreadful so I dutifully put it in my queue and hoped that I wouldn’t regret my decision to not show financial solidarity to a black woman in a lead role.
I did not. The Darkest Minds should have worked. We are literally locking up children now so we know how bad it can get. Right now, kids are getting drugged, abused physically and mentally, raped and killed under a legal yet immoral veneer of government authority. This movie should have felt like a cathartic release to viewers as we see kids turn the tables against those who sought to hurt them, but the enemy is too nebulous then once revealed, feels inadequate like a cowardly bait and switch in which we end up victim blaming. The story is less fearful of the fascistic impulses that exist among those who are supposed to protect the future, but instead reveals that it is complicit and fears the future, the children, more than the ones who made them villains in the first place. I don’t think that the story fully empathizes with the children, which is why it could not work. It squanders our visceral instinct by failing to reflect reality, making the villains into victims and vindicating their decision to jail the children.
I have to spoil The Darkest Minds to explain why the story makes no sense if you think about it. For some reason, most children die, and those who survive get powers, are deemed dangerous then sent to labor camps. If you escape, you are running away to a kid with powers who actually controls those camps after he used his powers to gain control of the government. Eventually the runaway kids with powers will be rounded up again except it will feel less dreary for a few minutes in a bucolic camping ground. It seems like a lot of work if the same guy is in charge of everything. Couldn’t he just make the schools do all the work instead of having to create and maintain two separate infrastructures to enslave all the kids? It seems like someone should have figured that out sooner. It felt ripped off from The Walking Dead’s Terminus and seemed like a trap from the start. Maybe I just don’t get it because something is lost in translation from the page to the screen, or I’ve seen too many movies and TV shows.
This villain seems like a lame Rapey McGee who had to create his own frat just to get an opportunity to commit crimes, not someone capable of running the government and a side gig as a camp counselor. If you throw a helicopter at someone, that person should be dead, especially if a bystander is nearly fatally wounded. It was simply naked ambition that enabled this character to live because they want this character to be a villain in future entries, which dear Lord, please no. You shouldn’t get a sequel if the first movie isn’t good, and you don’t know how to make a great villain. By making the adults into his victims, it makes a kid with powers into the enemy, not the adults who created the infrastructure thus the story punks out by failing to exploit our existing outrage against them in the real world, but retroactively endorses the prejudice that inspired an infrastructure that demonizes children.
The filmmakers did not really know what worked and what didn’t so they were clueless regarding which scenes to linger on and which to cut. For instance, when our hero casually kills someone, even if it is off screen, it feels as if it should linger on that moment, but because the movie is too concerned about maintaining Ruby’s hero status, it brushes over it and keeps it pushing. One adult, Rob, seems as if he was supposed to play a bigger, more sinister role than he did. Ultimately the movie is just as scared of Ruby as Ruby is so it never enjoys when she unleashes her power against adults. It is too subversive for them to enjoy.
The red power was slightly ridiculous and further reflects how the movie doesn’t actually empathize with these kids and thinks of them as monsters. The setup reminded me of Mordis in Inhumans except less cool. They are depicted as animalistic and other as opposed to the other types of powers that The Darkest Minds thus it basically sided with the fearful adults who imprisoned all the children. The movie has no sympathy for them. They get no backstory or scenes with normal interactions other than when they are hurting people. They are completely dehumanized and not depicted as exploited children. The writers do not even understand the lesson that it is allegedly trying to teach the audience. Instead of telling a story against prejudice, this movie tells a story that rationalizes prejudice because these kids aren’t kids. They’re dangerous and need to be stopped. Even the worst mutant got more sympathy.
It felt as if The Darkest Minds came from a regressive blender filled with The Divergent and X-Men franchises, which are not strong franchises but at least know how to target a viewer’s heart and stay on the right side of a story, with a dash of A Wrinkle of Time’s acceptance of self. This movie was too derivative. Liam’s backstory felt like Magneto’s origin story except more rushed and unmoored from history. The whole proceeding simultaneously felt too slow and too quick. I mentally checked out numerous times because there were too many flashbacks. I wish there was a rule against having flashbacks in a movie that isn’t part of a series of movies and contains scenes from an earlier installment. I understand that the viewers need to see how Ruby’s powers worked, but it got tiresome, and Avengers: Infinity War did it better. Stop Thanosing yourself! I also spaced out when things got too adolescent such as the dance or another love triangle. Eye roll.
People have critiqued The Darkest Minds as racist because Zu, the one Asian female character, does not talk. The director, Jennifer Yuh Nelson, is Asian, specifically Korean. So is the film faithful to the story? What is going on here? My guess is that Zu is more powerful and intimidating if she does not talk because then we are less likely to just think of her as a kid and more likely to think of her as a bad ass, but it bothered me too that she never really gets a back story.
I really like Amandla Stenberg, and I’ve seen a lot of her movies in theaters: Everything, Everything and The Hate U Give. I plan to see Where Hands Touch. I’m also biracial, and I love seeing those relationships represented on screen, but why does being a black and/or biracial mainstream movie star equal having a white male love interest. I only began to notice in this movie because while Liam was traditionally hotter, I thought her character had more chemistry with Chubs, the nerdy black kid. The story is the story so I’m not specifically complaining about The Darkest Minds, but I’m beginning to notice that if Stenberg is in a movie, she is going to have a white male love interest. I’m down with the swirl, but am concerned that filmmakers or rather casting directors seem to be making a cynical choice. If you have a black lead, the love interest can’t be black otherwise it is no longer mainstream and becomes a “black” movie. I’m down with the swirl and biracial romantic relationships need representation, but if EVERY movie with Stenberg has one, and no other teen protagonist movie does, it is getting ridiculous. Julia Stiles can’t hold it down forever, people. Save the Last Dance was seventeen years ago. Love, Simon, good job.
The Darkest Minds is not a good movie although it has a couple of solid sequences and features a talented cast. I haven’t read the books so maybe it is amazing, and I don’t get it, but if I sound like you, don’t go to a lot of trouble to check this one out.