The New Mutants: A Blendered Brain at 1:37 AM
The 1:37 AM Blank Screen
Okay, so it's 1:37 AM and I just finished *The New Mutants* on Disney+ and my brain feels like it's been put through a blender. Seriously. I'm sitting here on my couch with a half-empty bag of chips next to me—crumbs scattered all over my shirt like dandruff—and I'm just... staring at the blank screen like it personally offended me. The black rectangle is reflecting my confused expression back at me, mocking my inability to process what I just saw. The room is quiet, save for the hum of my refrigerator, and I feel like I've just run a marathon through a swamp. That movie. THAT MOVIE. I don't even know where to start. It's like they took five different movies—a slasher flick, a teen drama, a coming-of-age story, a superhero origin, and an experimental art film—and smashed them together and then set them on fire. But like, in a way that I couldn't look away? Does that make sense? No? Okay.
The Smiley Men: A Nightmarish GIF
So there's this scene. The hospital hallway. The fluorescent lights are buzzing, casting that sickly sterile green-white glow that reminds you of dentist offices and bad memories. When Dani first sees the Smiley Men. I literally jumped so hard I spilled my soda all over my favorite blanket. The stain is spreading now, a dark patch on the fabric, and it just looks like another bruise on the night. Thanks, Disney+. Thanks for that. And the way those things move - all jerky and unnatural like someone's trying to animate a creepy GIF from 2008, back when internet horror was low-res and grainy. It’s not the smooth movement of a predator; it’s the glitched movement of a mistake in reality.
It's stuck in my head now. I keep glancing down my dark hallway, expecting to see one of those grinning faces floating toward me, jerking left and right, smiles too wide to be human. I'm 28 years old, I shouldn't be scared of smiley faces. I pay taxes and rent and go to the dentist; I shouldn't be checking my closet door before I go to bed. But that’s the power of the uncanny valley, I guess. It bypasses your adult logic and hits the lizard part of your brain that still fears the dark. The visual of those faces, the stitched-up mouths, the dead eyes... it’s hauntingly effective in its stupidity.
The Fridge Dinner Metaphor
This whole movie feels like it's having an identity crisis. Is it a horror movie? A teen drama? A superhero origin story? A metaphor for coming out? YES. It's all of those things and somehow also none of them. It's like that time in college when I tried to make dinner by combining whatever was left in my fridge - pasta, expired yogurt, and that weird Asian hot sauce that had been there since the Clinton administration. It was technically food, you could chew it and swallow it, but also an experience I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. It tasted of confusion and mild food poisoning. That is *The New Mutants*. You can watch it, and it moves like a movie, but the flavor is all wrong.
The tone shifts are jarring. One minute it’s a somber discussion about trauma and isolation, shot like a Terrence Malick film, and the next minute it’s a jump-scare sequence designed to make teenagers throw popcorn. Then suddenly, Maisie Williams is staring wistfully into the distance, and you're supposed to feel the angst of youth. It’s whiplash. It’s exhausting. It’s like the movie doesn't trust itself to be just one thing, so it tries to be everything, and ends up being nothing.
| Property | Details |
|---|---|
| Movie Title | The New Mutants |
| Platform | Disney+ |
| Genre Identity | Horror / Drama / Superhero / Metaphor (All of them) |
| Current State | Brain in a Blender |
| Damage | One favorite blanket (Soda stained) |
The Romance: Strangers to Pool Kiss
And don't even get me started on the romance between Rahne and Dani. I mean, I'm all for representation, showing love in all its forms, but their relationship had less chemistry than my high school science lab experiment where I accidentally set the sink on fire. It was a dangerous disaster, not a spark. One minute they're strangers, sizing each other up in a creepy hospital, the next they're having deep emotional moments in a graveyard, and then—cut to—they're kissing in a pool. It’s like the movie fast-forwarded through all the relationship development because it was running out of time. We skipped the "getting to know you" phase, the "awkward flirting" phase, and went straight to "dying for each other."
But honestly? Was that part actually kind of beautiful? The way Rahne's wolf form protected Dani in the woods? That visual of the wolf standing over the girl, shielding her from the elements or the demons? Now that I'm typing this... I don't know. Maybe I'm just a sucker for supernatural romance tropes. Or maybe it was genuinely touching and I'm overthinking it because the rest of the movie was so... weird. There's a poetry there, a "Beauty and the Beast" vibe that works despite the clunky writing around it. It’s the only time the movie stopped shouting and started breathing.
The Production Shelf Life
The whole viewing experience was bizarre. I was curled up on my couch, periodically pausing to check my phone because my attention span has been completely destroyed by the internet. At one point my cat jumped on my lap right as one of the scary demon bear scenes was happening and I screamed so loud he's probably hiding under my bed now plotting his revenge. Sorry, Mittens.
You know what's wild though? This movie was supposed to come out in 2018. It sat on a shelf for TWO YEARS while they apparently tried to figure out what the hell to do with it. And you can tell. It feels like a movie that's been edited and re-edited so many times that it forgot what it was supposed to be in the first place. The seams are showing. The narrative glue is dry and brittle.
| Category | Details / Estimates |
|---|---|
| Original Release Date | April 2018 (Delayed) |
| Shelf Life | 2 Years (Reshoots & Edits) |
| Director Change | Josh Boone (took over from Boone & Lee) |
| VFX Code | Code: "JERKY_HORROR_V1" |
| Current Status | Canon Limbo (Deleted from future) |
Cool Characters, Wrong Movie
The characters are actually pretty cool though. Illyana with her purple dragon Lockheed? Yes, please. More of that. The design work is actually stellar, which makes the rest of it more frustrating. Sam Guthrie with his cannonball powers? Awesome. The idea of a kid who just wants to launch himself away from his pain is compelling. Maisie Williams as Rahne? She's carrying this movie on her tiny British shoulders. She gives a performance that is way better than the script deserves. She’s brooding, angry, vulnerable. But they're all stuck in this weird hospital horror movie that occasionally remembers it's supposed to be about mutants.
It’s like assembling a Formula 1 car and then driving it around a go-kart track. The talent and the design are top-tier, but the vehicle they're in doesn't let them stretch their legs. They are trapped in a single location horror movie when their powers require scale and spectacle.
| Role | Name | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Dani Moonstar | Blu Hunt | Holder of the Demon Bear / Emotional Core. |
| Rahne Sinclair | Maisie Williams | Wolfsbane / The Heavy Lifter. |
| Illyana Rasputin | Anya Taylor-Joy | Magik (Purple Dragon Lockheed) / The standout. |
| Sam Guthrie | Charlie Heaton | Cannonball / The tragic escape artist. |
| Roberto da Costa | Henry Zaga | Sunspot / Underutilized. |
The Ending That Just Stopped
And that ending! It just... stops. They fight the demon bear, Dani learns to control her powers by literally hugging the monster, and then they're just... standing there. Like, "So... what now?" The credits roll and I'm sitting there like, "Wait, that's it? Where's the post-credit scene? Where's the setup for the sequel that's never going to happen now that Disney bought Fox?" It’s an abrupt cliffhanger that doesn't offer hope, just confusion. It’s like reading a book and the last ten pages were ripped out.
The Mutant Landscape: Competitors
I think the worst part is that you can see the potential. There's a genuinely interesting movie in here somewhere about young mutants dealing with trauma and learning to control their powers. But it's buried under so many horror movie clichés and weird tonal shifts that it never really finds its footing. Let's look at where it stands against its peers and rivals in the genre.
| Competitor | Platform / Studio | Why it's a Rival |
|---|---|---|
| Hereditary | A24 | The Trauma Horror. *The New Mutants* desperately wants to be a serious horror film about generational trauma (smiley men/demon bear), much like Hereditary, but lacks the cohesive vision. |
| Teen Wolf | MTV | The Teen Drama/Wolf aspect. While Teen Wolf was campy fun, New Mutants treats the teen angst with heavy seriousness, making the tonal clash even weirder. |
| X-Men: First Class | 20th Century Fox | The Origin Standard. This is what New Mutants was trying to be—a fresh start for young mutants—but it got lost in the woods trying to be scary instead of inspiring. |
Conclusion: A Fever Dream of Confusion
Honestly, I don't even know if I liked it or hated it. It's like a fever dream that I kind of want to have again just to figure out what the hell was happening. I kept pausing it to google "The New Mutants plot explained" like a basic bitch because I was so confused. I needed a roadmap. I needed someone to tell me why the smiley men existed and why they looked like glitchy NPCs from a PS1 game.
Releted post - soul movie analytics, detail and deep review ao my honest review
Anyway, I'm rambling. My brain is fried and I have to work in like 5 hours. Why do I always do this to myself? I should have just rewatched Schitt's Creek for the 17th time. That's a show that knows what it is. It’s consistent. It’s funny. It doesn't have jerky smiling men.