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Despite shaking up the superhero genre by using a horror-themed setting, “The New Mutants” struggles to overcome mediocre acting and characters that never really connect with the audience. The film doesn’t waste too much time getting to the paranormal elements, and quickly feels different than any X-Men movie we’ve seen so far. While the plot moves along briskly and doesn’t get too complicated, the characters just don’t feel all that interesting. We get plenty of hints towards deeper backstories, but everyone is too tight-lipped for the first half of the movie and you don’t know how to feel about them. (And one character in particular has a bizarre origin that gets no explanation.) The acting is just okay, (poorly done accents and all), but ultimately Blu Hunt is just too bland in the lead role to carry the film. The climax arrives surprisingly quick, and just when it gets good, it’s over. And, despite something sinister going on behind the scenes the entire film, everything abruptly wraps up. (There supposedly was a post-credit scene that would’ve addressed this, but since any plans for a sequel were apparently canceled, the end is the end.)
**1/2 out of *****