The New Mutants review: Despite its notoriety, this X-Men outing is destined to be forgotten

Dir: Josh Boone. Starring: Maisie Williams, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Heaton, Alice Braga, Blu Hunt, Henry Zaga. 15 cert, 94 mins

Did The New Mutants shoot down an albatross? Did it break a mirror? How else could one explain the dismal luck of Josh Boone’s teen X-Men jaunt? His film, in some other rosy future, would have introduced a fresh team to 20th Century Fox’s stable of superheroes. But its release date was pushed back repeatedly so that familiar fare, like Deadpool 2 (2018) and Dark Phoenix (2019), could take priority. Then Disney took over the studio.

The New Mutants ended up as the franchise’s unceremonious swansong. The X-Men were officially retired by Disney, ahead of an eventual reboot that will see them step into the Marvel Cinematic Universe. Reshoots were cancelled. More delays followed. And, a month or so before its release, the Covid-19 pandemic saw cinemas worldwide shut their doors. It became the Schrödinger’s cat of Hollywood tentpoles – its very existence now so oddly improbable, posters confirming its release wryly declared that “hell has frozen over”.

With all this amassed notoriety, The New Mutants ends up disappointing on two fronts – it’s no underdog triumph, but neither is it some glorious disaster. Skulking around in Joker’s shadow, it’s another comic book film that insists it’s not a comic book film, swathed instead in the stylistic trappings of other genres. Here, The New Mutants coils itself around the idea of “X-Men as teen horror”. Its protagonist, Danielle Moonstar (Blu Hunt), is a young Cheyenne woman who becomes the sole survivor of a terrible tragedy – one that wipes her reservation off the map.

She wakes up in a hospital bed, in a room that’s devoid of light, warmth, and any sign of human activity. A voice on the other side of the door announces itself as Dr Reyes (Alice Braga). She tells her that a tornado destroyed her home. The growling in the air, the tremors in the earth, the soul-suffocating feeling that something was chasing Danielle? They’re all manifestations of her trauma. But her resilience has marked her out as special. Dr Reyes is convinced that she has powers, even if their nature still eludes them both.

In the meantime, Danielle is free to fraternise with the other patients, all mutants still struggling to control that which is an innate part of them. Rahne Sinclair (Maisie Williams), a Scot and a Catholic, has a beastly secret that’s made her unpopular with the local clergy. Sam Guthrie (Charlie Heaton) is a Kentucky miner, with an old-timey prospector voice to match, who’s crumpled into a ball of guilt and self-loathing. Illyana Rasputin (Anya Taylor-Joy, the film’s one bright spot) suffered an abusive childhood that forced her to retreat into a fantasy world. But her powers made it real – she can leap into portals and summon ethereal weapons. Rich brat Roberto da Costa (Henry Zaga) trembles at the touch of others.

Though its characters are drawn from the comic series co-created by Chris Claremont and Bob McLeod, The New Mutants’ connections to the wider X-Men universe are slight – there are a couple of direct nods, plus some recycled footage. In fact, Boone, who co-wrote the screenplay with Knate Lee, seems reluctant even to acknowledge that his film is dealing in superheroes unless absolutely necessary. These teens are just normal teens, until they’re momentarily required to pulverise buildings and thwart creatures from another plane of existence.

Boone, best known for directing 2014’s The Fault in Our Stars, seems far more invested in combining teen angst and supernatural threat, as a strange new force in the hospital forces these characters to come face to face with their own worst fears. But his set-pieces, including a Breakfast Club-style dance break, all feel familiar. The film’s progressive strides – namely, the way its LGBT+ romance is placed front and centre – feel dulled by several tone-deaf calculations: the whitewashing of Roberto (who’s Afro-Latino in the comics) and the characterisation of Illyana, whose mean girl pettiness is expressed solely through racist slurs directed at Danielle.

The New Mutants tramples over its own comic book credentials in order to chase after a concept already more convincingly dealt with by The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the latter inexplicably shown playing on the hospital’s TV. We end up with the worst of both worlds – and a film whose name may live on in infamy, but whose contents will be soon forgotten.