Review: The New Mutants

"Inside every person there are two bears"

The horror X-Men movie starring Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Heaton and Maisie Williams amongst others. Directed and co-written by Josh Boone, who brought us "The Fault in our Stars".

28 months after its original release date we finally got to see the horror X-Men movie we've all been waiting for. This might sound sarcastic, but I have actually been waiting for this ever since April 2017 and was super excited to see a darker movie within the X-Men world. Especially in these times it was great to be looking forward to something again, but unfortunately my excitement has dropped significantly after watching it yesterday...

The movie starts off with a few scenes filmed with a shaky camera, trying to build up suspense and catching the audience's attention to the protagonist, Danielle Moonstar (Blu Hunt). Luckily, for someone who is not a big fan of this camera style, they don't bring it back at any point of the movie. A few minutes later we get introduced to the other main characters. Illyana Rasputin (Anya Taylor-Joy), Sam Guthrie (Charlie Heaton), Rahne Sinclair (Maisie Williams), Roberto da Costa (Henry Zaga) and Dr. Reyes (Alice Braga), who, heads up, is a Doctor (you will get this joke after seeing the movie). The characters are all rather superficial. The arrogant one, the mean one, the loner, the nice one. There is not much more to them. There are a lot of accents, switching throughout the whole movie, really throwing you off as a viewer and ruining the performances. Anya Taylor-Joy's Eastern-European accent is really out of place and unfortunately, you don't quite get used to it.

By adding some kind of backstory the plot tries to add more depth to the characters but it doesn't quite work, as their performances are not impacted by their respective pasts. So you will only find a few scenes where a character goes from extremely arrogant to being vulnerable and then back to being extremely arrogant again, without any change in their actions or decisions. Thus, you will see there is a massive need for some character development. It is quite hard to connect to any of the characters or care for them.

Merely, Rahne and Sam are the ones less shallow than the rest and the ones I for one could at least care for. The lack of depth in the characters and not caring for them as an audience member makes it hard to get you on the edge of your seat when it comes to more scary scenes or the ones you would consider the horror aspect of the movie. I found myself being completely relaxed and leaned back during the more thrilling scenes where I'd usually be at the edge of my seat or at least alerted. I guess I was even more thrilled when Gabriella and Troy were trying to manage being at the audition, the basketball game and the decathlon at the same time in High School Musical.

Aside from the rather uninteresting characters the story and dialogue has major issues. At times the conversations are so incredibly predictable that you will find yourself mouthing the words to the characters. The story develops in the exact same way you would expect and little hints are made so obvious that you feel underestimated in your brain abilities as an audience member. This really doesn't leave any space for thrill, excitement or suspense and just shows you what you have been expecting for 94 minutes straight.

Another big question, I haven't found an answer to, is when this movie is supposed to take place. The technology suggests we're sometime in the 80s, but considering a certain relationship developing throughout the movie and how it is dealt with, I would think we are in a modern time. I am also confused as to when in the X-Men franchise "The New Mutants" is supposed to take place. As an IT-person, I have to mention the technology seen in the movie. They look incredibly unrealistic and don't make any sense, most of the time. 

Ok, now, as stated this movie has a lot of issues with the writing, but I do have to say, that I did have fun watching it. I started caring about Maisie Williams' character at some point and so I at least had someone to root for. The VFX (done by MPC) are quite neat and make the movie visually attractive. I especially liked Illyana's arm transformation, which looked really cool. As does the location and production design, which gives the movie the right feel. The music in the outro is quite good, but stays rather underwhelming for the rest of the time. 

All in all, I recommend watching the movie if you are an X-Men fan or just to come out of isolation, but keep your expectations low. The movie is still entertaining, but does not challenge the audience to think or look for clues. It is all given on a plate and you just have to watch.

Observations & (Fun) Facts

Disclaimer: contains spoilers

From the first scene where Danielle enters the room, all the others are sitting in a circle and the camera lingers on Rahne's reaction it was so incredibly predictable that they would make out at some point in this movie 

Rahne switches the way she pronounces Danielle 

Is waking up and yelling "STOP" in a calm voice actually gonna be what's ending that fight? Apparently it is.

Is it just me or is the aspect ratio weird somehow? 

Why does Dr. Reyes only need to confirm her identity AFTER reading what seems to be classified information??