The New Mutants (2020)

After a mysterious event wipes out her reservation, young Native American mutant Dani Moonstar (Blu Hunt) wakes up in a secure medical facility.

The strange and isolated hospital's only member of staff, Dr Reyes (Alice Braga) explains to Dani that she, and four fellow metahumans, are being held there so they can come to terms with controlling their nascent superpowers.

The other residents are lycanthropic Rahne Sinclair (Maisie Williams), abrasive sorceress Illyana Rasputin (Anya Taylor-Joy), explosive speedster Sam Guthrie (Charlie Heaton), and surly hot-head Roberto da Costa (Henry Zaga).

There are no fences around the facility, instead it is encased in an energy dome that is seemingly generated by Dr Reyes.

The whole set-up feels a bit odd, but the youngsters believe that the tight-lipped doctor is training them on behalf of Professor X and that they are being groomed to become future X-Men.

However, the group soon find themselves plagued by manifestations of their nightmares and worst fears, a combination - given their barely controlled mutant abilities - that is clearly a recipe for disaster. 

I had rather hoped that The New Mutants' long-delayed, and much dissected, storied journey to release was purely down to its misfortune of "falling between the cracks" during the Disney buy-out of Fox.

I imagined it was an unfortunate culture clash between the end of Fox's X-Men franchise and the larger (Disney-owned) Marvel Cinematic Universe.

But, honestly, writer-director Josh Boone's film is a mess. It's not that the movie - finally released in the UK on Blu-Ray this week - is bad per se, it's just weak and lacking a certain je ne sais quoi.

Except for the money splashed on screen for the climactic showdown, The New Mutants feels like a TV pilot. However, of course, The Gifted did it first... and undeniably better.

Although it's difficult to get truly invested in the underdeveloped characters and their ill-defined superpowers, there are no weak links in the very small cast, even if Henry Zaga's Roberto barely registers in the greater scheme of things.

They all do the best they can with very underwhelming material.

Visually, The New Mutants has some impressive moments - although most of these were already known from the trailers - but, ultimately, most don't amount to anything. They feel like shots that were created just to sell the movie, not advance the plot in any fashion.

The simplistic storyline sets up a shadowy, omniscient antagonist and then, come the final, big showdown, that all gets swept aside as the mutants battle against the runaway power of one of their own.

It's also established unequivocally that all the protagonists have killed people, either accidentally, or in Illyana's case, deliberately, with their powers, because they can't really control them, so why are we supposed to feel happy at the inevitable denouement that sees them walking free from captivity?

Sure, if you want to take this seriously, they shouldn't be imprisoned, but they need some kind of supervision.

A final shot of the X-Men's Blackbird landing outside the medical facility would have sufficed.

Coming in at around 90-minutes, The New Mutants is an easy watch, and doesn't drag, but it's not particularly satisfying or rewarding.

Probably purely for the presence of Anya Taylor-Joy, I'd been hoping for a hidden gem that was so good the Marvel Universe couldn't ignore it and would have to, somehow, weave its characters into Kevin Feige's MCU plans going forward.

Instead, The New Mutants is best (and easily) forgotten.