Imagine if the X-Men's Rogue were also telepathic and accidentally Hermione Grangered herself out of her parents’ memories. Then imagine she were sent as punishment to District 13, where she’s beaten by the cartoon version of William Stryker until she escapes with Jubilee, Beast and an angsty Peeta Mellark. Then they all find their way to Charles Xavier’s Sleepaway Camp for the Gifted, run by a psychotic teenage Professor X who eventually tries to rape Rogue and sell all her friends back to District 13 as part of a master plan to get back at his dad, the presidential version of William Stryker. That’s essentially the plot of The Darkest Minds, a YA dystopian sci-fi thriller that shamelessly poaches most of its key elements and characters from other, better examples of the genre. The result is a shoddy patchwork quilt of moments that mimic the most resonant parts of other stories, but don’t bother to elevate them.
Based on the book trilogy by Alexandra Bracken, the film revolves around Ruby Daly (Amandla Stenberg, of, ironically, The Hunger Games), a teen survivor of a pandemic that killed 90 percent of the world's children and gifted the rest with powers. Terrified of the newly powerful youngsters, the government rounds them up and places them in labor camps. Ruby is a telepath who can not only read, but control, minds, and after she accidentally wipes her herself from her parents’ memories in an attempt to stop them from worrying about her, they call the police and off to a camp she goes. She escapes six years later and spends the rest of the movie trying to navigate her own abilities as well as the forces who pursue her and those like her.
It's a mildly intriguing premise, but the film doesn't follow through on it with any sort of logic, so the entire story unravels almost as soon as it begins. Audiences are asked to believe that after a plague wipes out 90 percent of children in the United States, the survivors wouldn't be treated with extreme care given they'd be the literal future of humanity. Nope, they’re instead snatched from their parents (with virtually no protest) and placed in labor camps, where they work in sweatshops making … boots. And on top of that, the story attempts to implement a weird color-coded power hierarchy that's meant to sow disunity among the kids, but doesn't make enough sense to have any actual narrative impact.
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Greens are the lowest threat; their only real superpower is their intelligence. Next are Blues (telekinesis), then Yellows (electrokinesis), then Oranges and Reds, the most lethal as telepaths and animalistic fire-breathers (closest comparison would be the muttations from The Hunger Games). Orange and Reds are deemed most dangerous, and are isolated or killed if they’re detected, but Greens, Blues and Yellows are left alone ... as though intelligence, telekinesis and the ability to conduct electricity are nothing to worry about.
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The movie rides out this shaky premise to deliver its main characters from one predictable trope to another. After her escape, Ruby meets up with three fellow fugitives: a Green named Chubs (Skylan Brooks), a Yellow named Zu (Miya Cech) and a dreamy Blue named Liam (Harris Dickinson). They attempt to find a fabled safe haven for fugitive kids run by one of their own known as the Slip Kid, but, even more predictable than the two-day gestational period for Liam and Ruby's #truelove, the camp and its enigmatic leader are far too good to be true. The rest of the film is caught up in Ruby fighting the Slip Kid (Clancy Gray, the president's son, also an Orange) and reluctantly deciding to use her incredible abilities in the fight for freedom for those like her. And to be perfectly honest, this film could've languished in the inoffensive and boring categories, were it not for the extreme and disturbing violence someone thought belonged in this type of movie.
That isn’t to say other dystopian films shy away from violence against children, but that kind of imagery is only watchable set against the backdrop of a clearly alternate universe. The Darkest Minds is really good at borrowing concepts from other franchises that involve apocalypses and/or teens, but it fails hard in execution because it completely ignores the connective tissue that holds those stories together. There's no world-building, beyond off-hand explanation for why the West Virginia countryside is deserted ("No kids, no economy," states Mandy Moore's Dr. Cate Nolastname), and the initial narration establishing the pandemic. Beyond those two elements, this world doesn't feel that different from our own, and that makes the brutality these kids endure both gratuitous and unsettling.
In addition to the government, the kids are on the run from bounty hunters, one of whom is Lady Jane (Gwendolyn Christie), who engages Ruby & Co. in a car chase and takes shots at Liam's head like they're in a Bourne movie. We learn through flashback that Liam and Zu are two survivors of a massacre that occurred when they attempted to stage a prison break. We're treated to guards mercilessly gunning down children as they try to escape captivity, which -- spoiler alert -- is going to go over like a ton of bricks in the current political climate. Beyond that, Clancy Gray attempts to sexually assault Ruby and then threatens to simply try again and erase himself from her memories. Because the script hasn't bothered to set up a dystopia that would somehow ground those occurrences, it feels like teen torture porn.
The Darkest Minds seeks to capitalize on the YA dystopian market by stripping other franchises of their key elements and then tossing in violence for shock value to make up for its utter lack of originality. The result is discomfiting at best and offensive at worst. When Ruby finally emerges victorious, it’s not nearly impactful enough to make up for having to slog through bad imitations of other films and watch kids get abused by adults and each other for more than two hours.
Based on the book by Alexandra Bracken, director Jennifer Yuh Nelson's The Darkest Minds stars Amandla Stenberg, Mandy Moore, Gwendoline Christie, Harris Dickinson, Skylan Brooks, Miya Cech, Patrick Gibson, Golden Brooks, Wallace Langham and Bradley Whitford. The film is in theaters nationwide.