The New Mutants (2020)

 

Dani Moonstar, a young Cheyenne Native American, is the sole survivor when her entire reservation is devastated by a tornado. Left unconscious after the experience, Dani awakens in an oddly empty hospital run by Dr. Cecilia Reyes.  Reyes comforts Dani, explaining that she is not an ordinary human being, but rather has unique mutant DNA, and advises her to remain in this hospital until she learns the effects and how to control them.

Dani then meets the other four patients at the hospital.  Like her, are all teenage mutants who have each either experienced, or accidentally caused, a horrible tragedy.  It's fair to say that they are not all especially welcoming, but Dani does strike up a friendship with a shy and awkward young woman named Rahne (pronounced "Rain").

The teenagers are under constant supervision at the hospital, and prevented from leaving the grounds by a forcefield.  About the only thing that makes this palatable to them is that they believe they're being trained to join the X-Men.

Of course, if that were the case there would not be much of a film.  So naturally someone far more Sinister (capital S fully intended; I have read comics) is actually behind the facility, and the five teens will have to literally face their own darkest fears if they want to survive ...

The New Mutants is a curious misfire of a film.  It has a fine cast, including Maisie Williams and Anya Taylor Joy, and some evocative scenes, but it doesn't all quite come together.  I suspect that a long and somewhat incoherent production cycle were a major contributing factor to this.  The film was originally completed in 2017 as a YA movie - a solid choice given director Josh Boone's previous success in that arena, and it's fine young cast - and had positive test audience reactions.

Then the success of the film It prompted the studio to cut a trailer for The New Mutants that emphasised the scary elements, selling it as a straight up horror film.  The film was slated for reshoots to bring it more into line with this vision, but these apparently did not happen.  Instead, editing changes were made in order to shift the tone.  And then even further such changes were made after Disney acquired Fox Studios (and thus, this film).  The result of all this tinkering is a bit of mess, frankly.  You can see all the things the film is trying to do, but there are now simply too many of them to do so satisfactorily.  It can't be both an exploration of five different characters' trauma and a story of teenage angst and a sweetly low-key queer romance and a horror film and a superhero action flick.

This is a film that is considerably less than the sum of its parts, at least in part because it has too many parts.  It's a real shame, and I rather wish we'd got the chance to see the original "YA movie" cut from 2017.