THE NEW MUTANTS (2020) ***

The New Mutants seemingly couldn’t catch a break.  It was originally supposed by be released in 2018 but had to be postponed for planned reshoots that never occurred.  It then became a casualty of Fox’s merger with Disney and was pushed back yet again.  Once it seemed like it was finally going to see the light of a projector, the pandemic hit, and its release was shuffled yet again.  It eventually hit theaters last August, but I wasn’t about to venture out during COVID to see it.  Honestly, I kind of forgot about it until it miraculously showed up on HBO Max to little fanfare last week.  Now that I have finally seen it, I have to say that it probably works best on the small screen.  Although it’s easily the least of the X-Men movies, I still sort of dug it. 

An unseen force wipes out an entire Native American reservation.  The sole survivor is a teenager named Dani Moonstar (Blu Hunt) whose fledgling mutant abilities might’ve been the cause of the disaster.  She is sent to a hospital for young mutants where the other rebellious mutant teens are learning to come to grips with their burgeoning powers.  Before long, they are beset by an evil presence that turns their worst fears against them and they must band together and work as a team to fight it.

While it lacks the unadulterated fun of the main X-Men series, The New Mutants accomplishes what it sets out to do, namely tell a claustrophobic horror story within the realm of a superhero movie.  I for one thought the lower stakes and character-driven plot worked well for the material.  I mean, when you’ve seen as many superhero flicks as I have, it’s a refreshing change of pace when the fate of the world isn’t hanging in the balance.  It’s nice when all the heroes have to worry about is not being mauled by an enormous psychically projected bear.  I also have a soft spot for superhero flicks in which the characters have C-grade powers.  (In this one, the heroes:  Bounce off walls, turn into a werewolf, use a lightsaber, and there’s a Human Torch knockoff too.)

If I had saw this in the theater (especially during the pandemic), I probably would’ve been underwhelmed.  If I saw it then, I might’ve suggested it would’ve been better suited as a TV show.  Seeing it at home, years after the bad buzz that soured its release has died down, it made for a perfectly acceptable evening of entertainment. 

Another bonus is that it’s only an hour and a half, which is a relief after so many superhero flicks with unnecessarily inflated running times (cough… The Snyder Cut… cough).  It’s nice to find one that actually knows when to quit.  It might’ve made for an anticlimactic swan song to Fox’s run of X-Men movies, but it’s really a lot better than I had anticipated. 

Besides, any movie that is essentially A Nightmare on Elm Street 3:  Dream Warriors Meets Grizzly 2 is OK in my book. 

AKA:  X-Men:  The New Mutants.

X-MEN MOVIE SCORECARD:

X-Men: Apocalypse: ****

Deadpool: ****

X-Men: Days of Future Past: ****

X-Men 2: X-Men United: ****

X-Men: ****

X-Men 3: The Last Stand: ****

Logan:  ****

X-Men: First Class: *** ½

Deadpool 2: *** ½

X-Men: Origins: Wolverine: *** ½

Dark Phoenix: ***

The Wolverine: ***

The New Mutants: ***