It’s been a while since the days of the big and popular YA film adaptations including “Harry Potter” and Twilight. But once in a while you’ll get another adaptation that still does the exact same thing as any other YA film. “The Darkest Minds” very much bolsters many of these tropes and clichés, but luckily for it, there’s enough in it to make it better than most YA adaptations. But given the kinds of YA movies we’ve gotten in the past few years, that isn’t really saying much.
After a virus wipes out nearly all children under 18, those who survived obtained incredible superhuman abilities, resulting in the government labeling them as a threat and placing many them within internment camps while some of them are on the run. Ruby Daly (Amandla Stenberg) is one of those runaways after discovering she’s more powerful than most children with abilities, possessing strong psychic abilities that resulted in her erasing herself from her parents’ memories. When she joins up with another group of runaways, Ruby must come to control her abilities if she is to accept the kind of person she’s become while also trying to escape from the hands of the law.
Based on the novels by Alexandra Bracken, “The Darkest Minds” features nothing that’ll bring a great shift to the genre nor does it do anything other than what’s been done many other times before. It features many of the hammered-in messages and themes associated with adulthood and adolescence and also contains many of the tropes we’re familiar with, such as loud poppy music playing in the back, grinding love triangles, over-expositional dialogue that explains obvious things, etc.
The story itself is nothing special. Girl goes through admittedly intriguing prologue, i.e. depressing backstory, goes on the run, finds friends, develops feelings for one of those friends, etc., etc. There are also some twists and turns that you can probably see coming a mile away, leaving no room for genuine suspense. For instance, the group of runaways meet up with someone like them, a kid with abilities. The minute that person comes on screen, you know they have a villainous agenda.
But again, there’s enough in this movie to at least make it much more watchable and, in some ways, enjoyable than other YA adaptations. I remember when I saw 2016’s “The Fifth Wave” and thought how the first 20 minutes were far superior to the rest of the film. I thought it was a waste of a good concept. With “The Darkest Minds,” while there unfortunately isn’t a lot of world-building, the stuff they do introduce remains intriguing and fascinating consistently throughout the movie, i.e. the categorization of power levels and abilities by the color (green, blue, gold, red, orange) of your eye, which by the way is admittedly a really cool visual effect whenever it’s shown.
Amandla Stenberg without a doubt gives an admirable, believable performance and is certainly giving it her all, providing enough charm, charisma, and depth to make you at least connect with her. The rest of the runaways, consisting of leader Liam (Harris Dickinson), the tech-savvy partner Chubs (Skylan Brooks), and mute Zu (Mya Cech), and they all play their roles fairly well, with Liam acting as a serviceable love interest for Stenberg’s Ruby. The other thing to note is that when they converse and interact with one another, there is a sense of unity and family that I bought. Thus I enjoyed their comradery and dynamics.
Overall, “The Darkest Minds” is better than other YA adaptations, but that’s not much of a compliment. It acts on the same tropes and clichés we’ve seen before on top of a very predictable story. But the intriguing world-design, Amanda Stenberg’s committed performance, and the likably charming characters, as well as some impressive visual effects, do make it at the very least an enjoyable little flick.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tN8o_E_f9FQ&t=1s&w=585