I feel as thought the story of this film is pretty common knowledge at this point. Started years ago and then trapped in a development hell until it's eventual release and boy does it show. The New Mutants is an all over the place mess of a film that fails to deliver solidly on much of anything and utterly wastes all this potential it clearly had. It's such a frustrating watch because it feels like a constant exercise in "one step forward, two steps back" as it will do things that are legitimately good, cool or interesting only to revert to a clumsy, underwhelming mess of a film.
The acting is a great example of the aforementioned issue. Taylor-Joy, Williams, and Heaton especially are doing some really great work in here but are consistently hampered by the clunky writing and direction behind the camera. They are better performers than what is sometimes shown here and all I can imagine is that someone was telling them to be this uncharacteristically awkward at times. Williams really stood out to me as being very likable for the most part but then she's forced into this relationship that felt so manufactured and fake, never more apparent than in a shower scene where it looked like she was in the middle of a line, told to move to the next marker, and then continue speaking. It was so bad and she is so much better than that.
Let's talk about that story, actually. Forced relationships, clunky narrative, loose threads that are never really explained or wrapped up and a movie that really needs to pick a genre and go with it. A group of mutants trapped in a mental hospital trying to recover sounds amazing, especially with some horror notes in there and we COULD have had that! Instead we get forced teen drama and angst that just doesn't work. A ton of little side things that amount to nothing and some very overt winking and nudging at the audience to try and get us to believe what it wants us to. It was so frustrating to watch this because while all of this is happening it's easy to see what a unique and great movie this could have been. The Smiling Man is a terrifying image and could have been used to much better effect but instead we have to try and tick too many boxes and cover too much ground.
I know I've been hitting this pretty hard but I weirdly still had some fun with it and that's entirely because of the actors. Anya Taylor-Joy especially is starting to win me over because she just seems like she's having so much fun with this one and I think her take on Magick warrants more screen time in the future. That's the biggest takeaway, really. In a pass/fail world, The New Mutants is a failure as a single film but it succeeds in making me want more. I would love to see this cast, this group, this take on the Marvel Mutants return in something more fine tuned and focused. There is so much potential here and I really hope this gets another look by the studio and we can get a sequel that rights the ship. For now though, I think this is a quintessential 2020 film. It could've been awesome, ends up a bit of a disaster and now lets move on and try to put this whole mess behind us as quickly as possible.
