The New Mutants
**Before I discuss the movie, I wanted to say that my seeing “The New Mutants” in theatres is, in no way, advocating for people to go to theatres at this time in the US. The theatre I went to is the one I work at, so I know the people on duty, and know they are doing what they can to maintain a safe and sanitary environment. While I’m sure that theatres would appreciate the business, I know they’d also appreciate giving them time to re-acclimate to operations again after five months. That being said, let’s dive in to the movie.**
“The New Mutants” has a lot of good ideas and atmosphere in place to really have been something special in terms of not just Fox’s X-Men movies, but superhero cinema, in general. We’ve rarely gotten genuine horror in superhero movies, and when something has the opportunity to genuinely expand a genre, and franchise’s, horizons, it’s worth taking a chance on. But co-writer/director Josh Boone doesn’t really have the wherewithal as a storyteller or filmmaker to dig in to the psychological horror this movie only teases us with. This could have been one of the most substantial movies in the X-Men franchise outside of “Logan,” and that is not something I say lightly.
We begin by following Danielle Moonstar (Blu Hunt) out of her tribe’s reservation when it is under siege; she is later told that it was a storm, but we obviously know it was something more, and so does she. After watching her father die while she is in hiding, she is next in a hospital room with Dr. Reyes (Alice Braga, always a welcome addition to a movie), and she sees something in the vents. She is in a facility that treats teens with mutant abilities, and it’s not long before she is introduced to the rest of the people under Reyes’s care- Illyana Rasputin (Anya Taylor-Joy), Sam Guthrie (Charlie Heaton), Rahne Sinclair (Maisie Williams) and Roberto de Costa (Henry Zaga). They’re basically a misfit bunch out of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” but there’s something hanging over the facility they are at, which feels run down and abandoned, and it may have something to do with Danielle’s presence.
Boone and co-writer Knate Lee have a great setup, and good emotional ideas, that really could have made this a thoughtful horror tale about struggling with childhood trauma, psychological terror and a suspense story a la Samuel Fuller’s “Shock Corridor,” which I thought about more than a couple of times during this movie. Unfortunately, what show promise is given short shrift for effects-driven scares that barely even scratch the surface of what the characters are going through. And there are things about Dr. Reyes that also hint that her interests are not in their best interest, which only makes the film more frustrating, as it goes along. I like all of the performers in this film- they each have interesting individual arcs that could have been explored with a bit more detail (one wonders if that might have been the purpose of the re-shoots that never happened in this film’s sad, three year journey to theatres)- but Boone only seems interested in something that gives us some thrills without anything else going on, and hopefully, having it connect enough to give him a chance to explore these characters further. Since this is the official end of the line of the Fox X-Men franchise, with Marvel Studios looking to bring mutants into the MCU, that was wishful thinking, and more than a little misguided.
There are so many things about “The New Mutants” that I think could have been great, and are great (the cast, for one thing), that it’s a shame it ended up this way, and as, ultimately, a bit of an ugly stepchild to the rest of Fox’s mutant movies. I cannot be too hard on it because there are things, and moments, I genuinely like here (even if the accents by Williams and Taylor-Joy are kind of weak). But, now that it’s out, it’s easy to see why it took so long to come out, and it’s fitting that it’s place in cinema lore will be cemented less by what it does creatively, but how it ultimately finally made its way to the big screen.
