REVIEW: The Darkest Minds is dull, dull stuff

THE young-adult-dystopia bandwagon left town abruptly a few years ago so you kind of have to feel sorry for The Darkest Minds, which generates all the tension, urgency and desperation of a trip to your front gate and back.

Amandla Stenberg and Harris Dickinson in a scene from The Darkest Minds. Picture: Daniel McFadden/Twentieth Century Fox via AP

THE young-adult-dystopia bandwagon left town abruptly a few years ago.

One minute, the world just couldn’t get enough Hunger Games and Maze Runners and Divergents.

The next minute, the world just didn’t want to know (a cold shoulder so icy that the Divergent franchise froze operations ahead of starting a final instalment).

THE MEG: THIS YEAR’S MOST IRRESISTIBLY SHONKY ACTION MOVIE?

It does not help that this (supposed) first episode in a (possible) series of adaptations based on the books by Alexandra Bracken generates all the tension, urgency and desperation of a trip to your front gate and back.

This is dull, dull stuff.

So you kind of have to feel sorry for The Darkest Minds, arriving so late to the party it is just embarrassing, really.

Skylan Brooks, Miya Cech, Amandla Stenberg and Harris Dickinson in a scene from The Darkest Minds. Picture: Daniel McFadden/Twentieth Century Fox via AP

Amandla Stenberg (she was Rue in The Hunger Games) flatlines in the lead role of Ruby, a tormented teenager who survives a plague which has wiped out 98 per cent of the planet’s youth.

However, what has kept Ruby alive - an evolving power to control minds - could also get her killed.

She and some other fugitive kids with X-Men-lite talents will play hide-and-seek with nasty government types, while you will keep checking your phone.

Amandla Stenberg and Harris Dickinson in The Darkest Minds (2018). Picture: Daniel McFadden/Twentieth Century Fox via AP

While it must be said the camera loves Ms Stenberg from every angle, she does not seem to love acting all that much.

In scenes where she is called upon to defiantly raise hell on behalf of her hunted generation, Stenberg is like a deer in the headlights. Her Ruby is a far and feeble cry from Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen.

THE DARKEST MINDS (M)

Rating: One and a half stars (1.5 out of 5)

Director: Jennifer Yuh Nelson (Kung Fu Panda 3)

Starring: Amandla Stenberg, Mandy Moore, Bradley Whitford, Harris Dickinson, Patrick Gibson.

Turn the other way and run to the light