Josh Boone's attempt to merge the superhero and horror genres within the Fox X-Men universe is an ambitious creative choice, and there are stretches of The New Mutants where that ambition pays off. The film was shot in 2017, shelved, partially reshot, delayed repeatedly, and finally released in August 2020 into near-empty cinemas during a global pandemic, and the damage done by that production history is visible in every scene. It is a film that feels simultaneously unfinished and over-processed, a compromised vision worth examining for what it was trying to do.
At a Glance
Director: Josh Boone
Runtime: 94 minutes
Starring: Maisie Williams, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Heaton, Alice Braga, Blu Hunt
Release: 2020
Critics Rating: ★★ (2/5 stars, a compromised experiment with enough genuine ambition to make its failures sting)
Audience Rating: ★★½ (2.5/5 stars, better than its reputation)
Review Breakdown
Plot
Dani Moonstar, a young Cheyenne woman, wakes up in a mysterious facility after a catastrophic event destroys her reservation. She is told by Dr Cecilia Reyes that she is a mutant whose powers have not yet manifested, and that the facility exists to help young mutants control their abilities. The other residents, Rahne Sinclair, Illyana Rasputin, Sam Guthrie, and Roberto da Costa, are each haunted by traumatic events from their pasts, and as Dani's presence begins to stir something in the facility, those traumas begin to manifest physically. The premise is strong and the horror framework gives the film a claustrophobic intensity that distinguishes it from anything else in the X-Men series. The plot's weakness is its resolution, which abandons the psychological horror of its first two acts in favour of a conventional superhero climax that feels imported from a different and less interesting film.
Characters
Maisie Williams' Rahne Sinclair is the film's emotional centre, a young woman whose religious upbringing has made her relationship with her own nature a source of anguish, and Williams plays that conflict with a sensitivity and depth that the film around her does not always match. Anya Taylor-Joy's Illyana is the film's most visually striking creation, bringing a brittle, dangerous energy that makes her the film's most compelling presence. Blu Hunt's Dani is the protagonist but its least developed character, used primarily as a catalyst for the other characters' arcs. Charlie Heaton and Henry Zaga are underserved by a film that runs only 94 minutes and has too many characters to develop adequately. Williams and Taylor-Joy are the film's twin strengths, and their dynamic has a warmth and tension that gives the film its most affecting moments. Alice Braga's Dr Reyes is more interesting than she initially appears, and the eventual revelation about her role recontextualises her earlier scenes in ways that reward attention.
Tone
The horror register is the film's most distinctive and most successful element. The facility sequences have a real unease, and the manifestations of the characters' traumas, the Smiling Men who haunt Illyana, the demonic bear that pursues Dani, are unsettling in ways that the X-Men series had never previously attempted. The film is at its best when it commits to this register, and at its worst when it drops it for the conventional superhero action of its climax. The tonal collapse in the final act is its most damaging structural problem, and it is difficult not to wonder whether the studio reshoots were responsible for a conclusion that feels so at odds with everything that precedes it.
Meaning / Themes
At its most interesting, The New Mutants is a film about the relationship between trauma and identity, about young people whose most painful experiences have become inseparable from who they are. The mutant powers as metaphor for the psychological consequences of abuse, grief, and self-hatred is a rich seam the film mines with more intelligence than its production history might suggest. The representation of Dani as an indigenous character whose connection to her culture is central to her power is handled with a care and specificity that distinguishes it from the genre's more generic approaches to identity.
Direction
Boone's direction is most assured in the horror sequences, where his instinct for atmosphere and dread gives the material tension. The facility is effectively rendered as a space of confinement and unease, and the manifestation sequences have a visual imagination that suggests a director with a clear sense of what he wanted to achieve. The action sequences lack the scale and choreographic clarity of the X-Men series at its best, and the pacing is uneven in ways that suggest the editorial compromises of a difficult post-production. Mark Snow's score is atmospheric and well-suited to the film's horror ambitions.
Cultural Reception
The New Mutants received poor reviews on its release and was a significant commercial failure after a pandemic-affected theatrical run. Critics acknowledged the horror ambitions and the cast's performances while condemning the execution and the conventional climax. Its production history is now regarded as one of the most instructive examples of franchise filmmaking's capacity to undermine creative ambition, and the film is consistently cited as a case study in what happens when a studio loses confidence in an unconventional creative choice.
Final Verdict: A film that deserved a better fate than a pandemic release and a reputation built on its production troubles rather than its actual content. Maisie Williams and Anya Taylor-Joy are excellent, the horror register is effectively sustained for most of the runtime, and the thematic concerns are handled with more intelligence and care than the genre typically manages. But the climax discards everything that makes the film interesting, and the damage done by years of studio interference is visible throughout. Not the disaster of legend, but not the film it was trying to be either.