The Darkest Minds (2018)

(On Cable TV, April 2019) Weren’t we done with dystopian Young Adult novel movie adaptations? Apparently not, but thankfully The Darkest Minds is so dull and generic that you will forget it before long, or at least mesh its generic plot details with other similar movies. Let’s see—here we have a group of virtuous teenagers facing off against an adult-led dystopia, so that’s familiar. (Well, there’s a twist to that, but it actually makes the film even dumber and less coherent.)  The psychic powers that the teenagers have are colour-coded for your convenience, meaning that they’re so rigidly defined that we’re to act surprised when they’re not. As usual for those products aimed at less-discerning teenagers, our group of protagonists goes on the run, fleeing the killer adults to join some kind of underground rebel group. There’s a love triangle, just in case you feared that this particular contrivance wouldn’t show up. The plot twists here aren’t as telegraphed as much as they are paraded around on the mistaken belief that this is the first movie we’ve even seen. Thankfully, the box-office receipts were so poor that we’ll never see a sequel. If the film has one meagre saving grace, it’s that it features the likable Amandla Stenberg, a welcome spot of protagonist diversity in a genre almost exclusively led by Caucasian boys and girls. It’s not much, but if you’re looking for one point of differentiation, there it is. It doesn’t make the rest of The Darkest Minds any better, though.