The Darkest Minds

The Darkest Minds (2018) is set after a disease that killed most children. Those who survived developed powers, and the state has put them in camps. Ruby escapes and goes looking for somewhere safe with three others like her. The source is Alexandra Bracken's novel series. The film arrived at the end of the dystopian young adult wave, one of the ones that followed The Hunger Games and Divergent and found no audience. It is Jennifer Yuh Nelson's first live action feature. She had directed Kung Fu Panda 2 and 3, and with the second became the first woman to solo direct an animated feature from a major studio. It runs 105 minutes. Good for: young adult dystopia, stories about powers, and readers of the series. Less good for: the film applies every convention of the genre in order and adds nothing to any of them. The worldbuilding is full of unexplained gaps, and the ending is left open for a sequel that was never made.