MOVIE REVIEW: "The Darkest Minds" (2018)
Synopsis: In an apocalyptic world, where a pandemic kills most of America's children and adolescents, some survivors develop supernatural powers. They are then taken away by the government of their families and sent to custody camps.
Cinematographic adaptations based on children's books have become a veritable fever over the last few years. Being set in future dystopics - where hope seems to no longer exist - and having characters relatively confused with themselves (but at the same time discovering their souls as heroes), they join their equals and fight against some kind of system. The Darkes Minds tries to repeat the formula... But fails miserably.
The screenplay focuses on a teenage girl named Ruby. She is one of the survivors and with unexpected help she escapes from the special unit of government (where other children with special abilities are divided by color and kept in captivity for "scientific studies") and since then her life it changes forever. In the middle of the path, she meets others like her and joins the group in search of the truth behind the mystery in which they all belong.
In their total lack of originality, writers get the prowess of not inserting any single new element into the plot (it's all copied from some other film) that builds on all the possible and imaginable clichés surrounding this theme (at times , even make a point of repeating some scenes already seen in other films of the same follow). I confess that I was surprised to see that the projection managed to overcome the 90 minutes with such a lack of material and such superficial dialogues.
Absolutely everything in this film is shallow (including, the way it ends ... causing a false sense of "rebellion" that is never deepened throughout the argumentative construction of the story). There is no factor that feeds a possible complexity in the plot, much less explanations that satisfy the events that follow. Things just "happen", as if the audience simply had to accept what's on the screen without feeling the need to question something.
The characters, without exception, are completely boring and heavily misconstructed. There is no chemistry between any of them, everyone has their powers minimally explored, the cast's performance is skittish (highlighting the protagonist herself, played by Amandla Stenberg) and the situations they are subjected to are mostly too simple for a film claims to have a premise that they deem ambitious from their early minutes or equally nonsense when they try to force the bar into creating unnecessary dilemmas (including a wholly unreasonable novel).
Except for a moment that is part of the third act (a well-executed action scene that disagrees with all the result presented until then), the film has an extremely slow and visually weak rhythm for the theme that is proposed. The "different" are hunted by caricatures and totally predictable villains (and some of them barely appear on the branch). It's amazing how ridiculous they are. But with such a lazy script, this is something more than expected.
Perhaps, the very hurried (and full of consistent and punctual mistakes!) direction chosen by the director Jennifer Yuh Nelson decided to work on is the biggest culprit due to the project's lack of solidity. However, the inaptitude present in the original material (book written by Alexandra Bracken that I have had the opportunity to read) and its precarious adaptation in script form certainly weigh heavily for the failure of this film that follows lukewarm even in its heaviest moments.
With regard to quality techniques, The Darkest Minds manages to be even worse. Poor photography (no dystopia in the future on screen), a hodgepodge of wrongly edited scenes (and several of them without connection to the plot itself), laughable special effects, and a soundtrack almost completely inappropriate. In the end, the only feeling left by the movie (which can not even be well-intentioned) is the frustration related to the loss of time.