While Christopher Robin felt like a relic of the 90s, a similar can be said about The Darkest Minds, which is coming out a couple years after the trend of young adult dystopias in Hollywood has more or less come to an end. The film based on the first book in a series of the same name by Alexandra Becken and adapted by Chad Hodge. It takes place in a world where a disease has wiped out a vast majority of people under 20, and the survivors are left with strange powers. And in an effort to find a cure, the government has placed all the surviving kids in camps where they are separated by the threat level of their powers.
We follow Ruby (Amandla Stenberg), who was taken to one of these camps as a young child, and she is considered dangerous because her power level is classified as “orange,” which is the highest. But she has been able to keep a low profile and her identity hidden for five years when her true level is discovered and she ends up on the run. She bumps into a group of other runaways like her Liam (Harris Dickinson), Chubs (Skylan Brooks), and Zu (Miya Cech). She joins them and they slowly find out the truth about what’s going on.
Like I said, this feels like a film that is at least five years too late in its release. No franchise has come close to matching the success of the Hunger Games series, and Maze Runner should consider itself lucky it got to complete its story since that luxury was granted to no other property (unless they get around to making that TV movie finale for Divergent – which I would love to see because that would be hilarious). With The Darkest Minds, it serves as a reminder why these films never really connected. It doesn’t stray far from the same YA tropes that we’ve seen over and over again. It’s forced to compact what was probably several hundred pages of world building within a (thankfully) under two-hour runtime in addition to having the high octane action sequences, the intrigue, and the romance you’d expect. Though, I guess I am somewhat grateful that this film didn’t make me memorize a million weird character names and unnecessarily complicated terminology, hell, the most important thing you need to remember here are just colors.
Even with that, I feel like the film wastes a interesting opportunity to gain some relevance in the same way that the Hunger Games series did. After all, if you’ve been paying attention to the news recently, we’ve been hearing so much about kids of migrants, refugees, and asylum seekers being separated from their families and being taken to camps where they are neglected and abused. The film adds this element where the camps are promoted as safe spaces through propaganda ads, hiding the insidious reality of them. There is some nuggets of a compelling world here that speaks to the state of things at this moment in time. However, since the film is far more interested in the usual YA stuff and the franchise building, it never gets the chance to hone in on this element of the story.
The only reason I was even mildly curious about this is the fact that it’s directed by Jennifer Yuh Nelson. After some TV work, he’s made a name for herself as a story artist for stuff like Dark City, Madagascar, and Kung Fu Panda, and later proved an excellent director when she helmed Kung Fu Panda 2 and 3. She has shown to have a real knack for character, story, and action. I was excited to see what she can bring here, but found myself disappointed. There are some occasionally striking images, but the material she’s working with is flawed on such a fundamental level that even the very best filmmaker would struggle to make this story resonate. She can certainly get a solid performance out of her actors, who all do fine work, and she makes the most out of a modest $34 million budget. I did find myself more engaged with this than any of the other Hunger Games-wannabes that I’ve seen, but it ultimately doesn’t work, especially given its cliffhanger ending, which seemed so sure that it’s getting a sequel that I just started feeling bad for it.
The Darkest Minds may be less painful than other films of its kind, but in many ways, it still feels like business as usual. The actors, but mostly Amandla Stenberg, and Jennifer Yuh Nelson definitely try to make it all compelling, but the experience doesn’t add up to anything particularly meaningful or relevant despite ample opportunity to do so. I could maybe say that you should check it out if you’re a fan of the books, but since I can’t fathom a reality in which we get a follow up to this, the various cliffhangers and unanswered questions make it a total waste of time and energy. Though, I do sincerely hope that Nelson gets another chance at a live action project.