By the time Josh Boone’s The New Mutants arrived in theaters this past August, morale surrounding the release wasn’t exactly high. The film had seen its release date pushed a ridiculous number of times (admittedly sometimes due to factors that had nothing to do with the production), and it didn’t exactly inspire confidence that 20th Century Studios was willing to put it on the big screen when most big screens around North America were closed. Then the reviews came out from professional critics who had to buy tickets for the show, and they weren’t exactly brimming with positivity – with CinemaBlend’s own Sean O’Connell describing it as, “A simplistic, unimaginative, low-budget blip on the comic-book radar that neither hinders nor furthers the superhero conversation.”
But you know what? With appropriately lowered expectations, it’s actually better than you might think.