The New Mutants

The Fear Hunter

The New Mutants
USA 2020 Directed by Josh Boone
20th Century Fox

The New Mutants is the latest and last of the 20th CenturyFox X-Men movies, by way of being a spin off, much like the original comic was. I can’t talk about the original source, though, because I’ve never read it. It’s also had a very troubled production history. I first saw the trailer three years ago in cinemas as a ‘coming soon’ and then it was pulled and there were reshoots and it continued to get pulled and rescheduled around other tent-pole superhero movies until, the last time it was moved, was because coronavirus hit. It finally got a cinema release, for the few cinemas still open, in August of this year but it wouldn’t have done much at the box office, I would have thought, because, you know... Coronavirus guys!

The film follows the adventures of five new mutants who are being held prisoner, under the guise of being treated medically to find their powers and determine whether they are a menace to others (spoiler, that’s obviously not the real reason they’re being held there... well, not quite). The five are played by Maisie Williams, Anya Taylor-Joy, Charlie Heaton, Henry Zaga and, the newcomer to the ‘patients’, Blu Hunt. The ‘questionable’ doctor who seems to be the only person locked in with them and who has mutant powers herself is played by Alice Braga (I'm not sure where the cleaners are supposed to be). However, a day after Blu Hunt’s character comes to stay, things start going wrong for the mutants and it looks like their collective pasts are catching up with them in the form of various fears and, frankly, some very cool looking creatures which look a little like the Slender Man but with big, gnashy Venom teeth. Can the five learn to work together to defeat their mysterious foes?

Well, yeah, of course they can. And, as it happens, it turns out to be a quite entertaining movie. Not bad at all, though, certainly it is a troubled film, as you can see from the number of times it got pulled and rescheduled. Even further reshoots were required at some point which, due to the teens having aged since the original footage was shot, didn’t happen in the final instance.

Like the other X-Men films put out by Fox, the time frame continuity on this is shot to hell. There is evidence to suggest it was supposed to take place during the events of X-Men: Apocalypse (reviewed here) and, also, evidence on screen to support it taking place after the events of Logan (reviewed here... even though I’m still not sure how the heck these films even join up credibly themselves). It makes no sense at all and... well... I’m not sure what year it’s supposed to be set but I do know they have my old Cathode Ray Tube TV up in their attic so... yeah, your guess is as good as mine.

Unfortunately, it’s not just timeline continuity that’s the problem here. There’s a scene early on in the film where Blu Hunt slams into a force field at full pelt, causing her to bash her nose in, starting it bleeding from both nostrils. Unfortunately, there’s a couple of close up shots in the same scene where the blood from her nostrils has gone. Her power is she’s a quick healer then? Oops, no, apparently not because, in the very next scene, her nostrils are back to bleeding from the accident. Hmm... I don’t know if this continuity was a casualty of the reshoots or was just slack the first time around. No clue but... it’s very noticeable. Maybe they'll digitally correct this for the Blu Ray release.

Another thing which puzzled me is when the gang of five start bonding and get all The Breakfast Club on the audience. They find a polygraph in the attic and start playing a kind of non-dare version of 'truth or dare' with it. I just can’t figure out where they suddenly got all the paper from to keep the polygraph running? Quite strange, in all honesty.

Now, you may remember the film was pitched, very definitively, as a horror film when the trailers came out and... well it’s kind of like that, in a way. It certainly uses the cinematic language of the horror film to weave its simple story but, the problem is, the source of the evil things that go bump in the night is pretty obvious after the first ten or twenty minutes... so it all seems somewhat less concerning. I honestly thought the director was trying to lull me into a false sense of security and that he was suddenly going to pull the rug from under me at the last minute but... no, alas. The source of all their problems is actually the one you figure out from the start so, yeah, it could maybe have strived to be less obvious, to be honest. It kind of takes the dark sting out of things.

There were a couple of nice little things in it though. At one point, Blu Hunt is told that she’ll get out of there... “Probably before the rest of us cuckoos.” This is almost a double reference, I felt. One, because the five are being held in something like a psychiatric facility (which is where some of it was shot in real life, apparently)... and so it could be considered a reference to One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest. However, given the special talents of the teenagers, I couldn’t help but think it might also be a reference to John Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos so, yeah, a nice double reference, I reckon.

And there’s also some nice stuff happening with the music (including a very Glass-like end credits piece). Going from X-Files to X-Men, we have a nice score from composer Mark Snow (sadly not on CD at time of writing), which is pretty good. There’s a lovely moment when Charlie Heaton’s character notices something up with one of the washing machines and as the sound design of the washing machine continues, you notice a rhythm which blends into the percussion on the score. So, yeah, as obvious as this film is, it still has some nice ideas and moments like this that elevate it to a point farther than some of the shoddier X-Men films.

And, yes, not much else to say about The New Mutants other than, it doesn’t get dull and I liked it enough to hopefully buy the Blu Ray when it hits the mid-year sales. It has a wonderful bunch of actors doing their thing and, although it doesn’t quite get into the realms of horror as much as it seems to want to, it manages to entertain and I would have liked to see where the other two parts in what was supposed to be a trilogy might have gone. Alas, before this film was even finished, the director nixed the idea of a post-credits teaser because, by then, the rights to the X-Men had reverted to Disney when they bought 20th Century Fox so, while I’m sure this is not the end of the X-Men movies, I’m guessing they’ll be redeveloped to dovetail into the main Marvel Cinematic Universe and recast with new faces and adventures. So we’ll never get an actual sequel to this one... which is a shame because it’s quite enjoyable, for the most part.

The Secret Of Marrowbone

The Fours Of Perception

The Secret Of Marrowbone
(aka Marrowbone)
Spain 2017 Directed by Sergio G. Sánchez
UK cinema release print.

Surprisingly... since I didn’t rate the trailer for this one much and especially in regards to the fact that I generally expect films that have had a name change before they’re released in England to be quite bad (thus warranting said name change in the first place... this film was originally titled, plainly, Marrowbone in the stateside release)... it turns out that The Secret Of Marrowbone is actually quite a well put together movie.

Following a quite long pre-credits sequence involving a mother and her four children fleeing to a new, relatively isolated home after allegedly horrendous events involving her husband, the film’s credit finally comes up (after the mother has died and the children’s worrying father has just found them), with the titular secret still firmly in place. Time has moved on after the credits and the four children are waiting out the months, hiding in plain sight and maintaining the fiction that the mother is still alive until the oldest of the four, Jack, turns 21 and they can no longer be separated by the authorities.

The solid cast of four... Jack (George MacKay), Billy (Charlie Heaton), Jane (Mia Goth) and Sam (Matthew Stagg) have already befriended local librarian Allie during that opening sequence... played by Anya Taylor-Joy, who I’ve loved in everything I’ve seen her in so far with special shout outs to The VVitch (reviewed here), Morgan (reviewed here) and, to a lesser degree (although she was no less brilliant in it), Split (reviewed here). She is their ally but knows nothing of the hidden secret lurking in the new family unit, the discovery of which will eventually lead to a shift in her perceptions of what’s happening, to some extent.

Now, it would be inaccurate to say that I didn’t figure out the conclusion of the movie’s reveal here as we are getting fed clues as to what’s going on with regards to the ghosts of the house and such like all the way through the narrative. However, it would also be true to say the film took me by surprise at the end purely because, like one of those good old giallo thrillers of the 1970s, The Secret Of Marrowbone kind of presents us with so many possibilities of just what that secret could be that, by the end, you are bound to be focussing on one more than the other and, alas, I somehow failed to concentrate on the solution to the mystery that lay within for favour of another. So, unusually for me, the film retained its secret to some extent because of the almost needle in a haystack pursuit required to hit upon the right combination of story elements. Of course, once all is revealed you can look back at how things have been referred to in the story and how the true facts of things can sometimes lend possibilities which aren’t necessarily signposts to the true destination. For instance, when the importance of avoiding mirrors is raised a number of times early on in the film, it threw me off my original solution due to other possibilities that could be deduced from such a warning and all I can say about this is... very well played Mr. writer/director Sergio G. Sánchez.

The cast of the film all acquit themselves more than admirably and help lend credence, with the smoke and mirrors of their trade, to the mystery which slowly unfolds, in its own good time, as it is revealed to the audience a little before the people in the story, regarding their secret. And if that seems an absurdly enigmatic thing to say about the film here... I’m sorry but I don’t want to post any spoilers so these kind of verbal gymnastics are necessary to protect the secret as much as the Marrowbone children in the film would.

In some ways, the main protagonists, especially the four children who live in the house, are just like the inhabitants of an old Enid Blyton book like the Famous Five or Secret Seven and, honestly, I’d say that this is exactly how the movie plays out, in some respects. Like a children’s Enid Blyton adventure but, using the syntax of horror cinema in a few key places to add coal to the fire of the secret at the heart of the mystery. Whether this is, or is not, an actual horror film I shall leave for you to decide... except I shall say that, within my own strict definition of what comprises such an affair, I would argue that it definitely isn’t in any way a horror movie but that’s not to say the film doesn’t have some sinister and scary moments which horror fans will appreciate. And that stuff is all fairly well done here, too.

Mr. Sánchez’ direction, editing and use of slow camera over some nice shot compositions are all excellent and the score by Fernando Velázquez is typical of that composer’s work in this vein... that is to say it’s excellent, appropriate and possibly great as a stand alone listen (although I will have to wait until the CD arrives before I can confirm that last comment). Also, although she isn’t in it as much as the four other main protagonists, Anya Taylor-Joy’s presence lends the production a certain weight, not just in terms of her acting, which is always fine but, also, in the striking and slightly off kilter beauty she manages to project to the camera... a face not easily forgotten.

Perhaps the most unusual thing about The Secret of Marrowbone, though, is that it manages to tip its hat on the most important of the end reveals in a way that doesn’t provoke disappointment (at least not in this viewer) but in a way that one could go back to the film again and watch it as a completely different kind of experience to the first viewing. That is to say, the weight of the finality of the end solution and the, strange but possibly welcome ray of hope for at least two of the characters at the end of the movie, is not something that crushes the weight of the build up of the rest of the film and, instead, works hand in hand with the central logic of the piece in a way that doesn’t stifle your interest in the characters. Which sometimes happens in films with this kind of 11th hour plot reveal, it has to be said.

The Secret Of Marrowbone is a better movie than it’s currently being given credit for and certainly worthy of your time if you like a good old fashioned mystery with elements of the horror and supernatural thrown in as seasoning to the dish. Definitely one to check out if you have nothing else on.