The New Mutants (2020) - Movie Review

In a year that has seen one of the biggest shake-ups in the Hollywood release schedule of all time, the fact that this movie, one most of us weren’t even sure we’d ever get, managed to come out is kind of miraculous. Of course, in that miracle lies the biggest obstacle standing between this production and success: The fact that we’ve been teased about this thing for a few years by now. Personally, I was counting my blessings that this film made it to theatrical release to begin with, and knowing how wonky the X-Men franchise has been these last several years, I didn’t really go into this with major expectations or anything. I get the feeling that that’s the best way to approach this film, as it’s honestly pretty damn good when taken on its own terms.

I absolutely love Maisie Williams in this. When I saw her in iBoy, I had a feeling that she’d do well in the superhero arena, but I genuinely didn’t realise she’d take to it this well. She’s like an explicitly queer take on Nightcrawler’s religious roots from way back when, and her and Blu Hunt are embarrassingly cute together. I honestly feel like I got my money’s worth just for her, but thankfully, the rest of the cast keep up. Blu herself does well as the focal point character (and it's ridiculous how refreshing it is to see a Native American character played by a Native American actor) Anya Taylor-Joy gets to flex her experience with psychologically-tinged comic book capering, Charlie Heaton sells the trauma of his character unnervingly well, Henry Zaga gets a lot of his character across through sheer physicality, and Alice Braga feels like a slightly more sinister Dr. Staple in her mannerisms. And when they interconnect, the relationships help form the core of the narrative.

 

One of the primary reasons this film has spent so long on the shelf is that writer/director Josh Boone wanted to do some reshoots. Reshoots that ultimately didn't happen, and in the final product, I can definitely see why they were needed. There’s quite a bit to do with the characters and even the setting that walks right up to the line between ambiguous and unresolved, and there’s certainly room for tweaking and refinement in places. But not nearly as much as I was expecting, honestly, as quite a bit of this holds up pretty well as is. As a more YA-oriented take on the X-Men formula, the way it delves into the characters’ respective traumas and how it affects their powers and self-perception is quite affecting, to the point where I’m more than certain that I’ve met some of these characters in real life.

Now, as a superhero horror flick, I’d honestly argue that it doesn’t quite fit that mould as well as Dark Phoenix did… no, seriously. The effects work is pretty rough, and a lot of the horror is focused on the mental state of the characters, the true extent of which feels like it was in the ‘reshoot’ section of the script. There’s also how clearly derivative the overall plot is to The Breakfast Club, Dream Warriors, and Buffy (the latter of which the film is quite upfront about as an influence). But honestly, neither of those things bother me; I’m fine with a less overt horror sheen if it means characters worth gravitating towards, and while it’s reminiscent of other things, I adore those other things, so that works just fine with me.

I put this in the same category as Tenet, as far as it being a good film that is a few production tweaks away from being a great film. I love the characters, I love the psycho-superhero scope of the story, and it doesn’t even feel like it needs direct comparison with the other X-Men films, so it can stand on its own as a side-entry in the series as intended. I get that a lot of audiences out there are disappointed and/or underwhelmed by this, and considering the wait, I don’t exactly blame them. But c’mon, it’s a queer psychiatric superhero film; after how much I fell for Birds Of Prey and Glass, how could I say no to this?