I saw from the cinemas schedule that there would be a new movie premiering in Indonesia on 15 August 2018 and I only knew it was a science fiction thriller movie. I got to admit though that I have absolutely no clue what the movie was all about except that it was telling the story of some teenagers with powers. Nevertheless when it did show for the first time, my wife and I went to see this last night to find out if the movie was good. So here is more on the movie.
Brief Story Line
Story was set in the US where suddenly a disease referred to as IAAN infected only children and ultimately killed 90% of them. The surviving children were put in a camp where they were all being detained like prisoners, due to their sudden ability to have powers. They were all classified into colors, with green being the least dangerous (their powers were becoming highly intelligent) and orange the most dangerous one with ability to mind control.
Ruby Daly (Amandla Stenberg - The Hunger Games, Everything, everything etc) was one of the children who had amazing power. After running away from the camp where she was imprisoned, she met with fellow runaway children of Liam (Harris Dickinson - Beach Rats), Charles "Chubs" (Skylan Brooks) and the youngest Zu (Miya Cech) with their own unique abilities. Together they embarked on a journey to find a supposedly paradise-liked place where children could be free, under the leadership of the legendary Slip Kid.
However, it was not easy to do so, since they were being chased by bounty hunters called tracer, particularly by Lady Jane (Gwendoline Christie - Game of Thrones TV series, Star Wars: The Force Awakens etc) and also by Cate Connor (Mandy Moore - 47 Meters Down, American Dreamz etc) who was member of the League that opposed the government. So could Ruby and her friends reached there? Find them all in this light teenage with super powers movie.
End of Brief Story Line
Well I have to say that this movie was actually not as bad as I thought it would be. If you read the critics rating (less than 20%), it felt like a movie that was soooo bad that it was not worth to watch at all. But after seeing this with my wife, I felt that it was quite fun, light and did give us some enjoyable moments. Yes I agreed that there would be areas where I thought could be better, but it hardly justified having such low rating.
The movie's premise might not be very original where teenagers suddenly having super powers and being hunted by government (like mutants in X-Men comics and adapted into TV series The Gifted) and they were classified into various groups/classes (felt like the premise in Divergent series), but it was still interesting to see the mystery surrounding the disease and the way the powers change these teenagers life. Plus of course the main character Ruby seemed to have all the potentials of becoming an awesome powered person with her special ability. I think Amandla Stenberg performed well in portraying Ruby. Obviously being a teenager focused movie, there was a bit of romance involved which took quite a large screen time (I am OK with that personally but perhaps critics did not like them as it probably made the movie a bit out of focus).
Other than Ruby, I thought Chub's character was very likable. He had a certain charm and gave lots of funny remarks, while Liam was OK as Ruby's love interest and Zu despite did not say any words did leave quite impression on us. Another character that I thought was very interesting was Clancy Gray (Patrick Gibson). Unfortunately though, the rest of the characters were not given enough screen time and I felt underdeveloped, especially Lady Jane. I thought it would be nicer if she was given a little more background to make us understand on her and why the children were scared of her. It was a bit of a waste of Gwendoline Christie's talent whom I was unable to recognize here due to her totally different appearance from Game of Thrones.
For a movie about teenagers with super powers, it did not have so much of scenes showing the abilities. The pace was quite OK in the early part, but then it became slow in the middle and only picked up the pace towards the end. The action sequence were not too frequent and being a movie for teenagers, there were no violent scenes. The special effects were pretty decent with good enough sound effects. The movie's tone was light, having few funny moments and touching moments as well (with one particular moment that I felt was quite emotional and did affect my wife).
When the movie finally finished, the end credit mentioned that it was adapted from a novel. I looked up in the internet and it was from a young adult novel of same title written by Alexandra Bracken. It was the first of a trilogy, which no doubt the producer of this movie was hoping it would be successful enough to become a new franchise. However, looking at the performance of the movie, especially with low rating and audience did not really embrace it, unfortunately for us who wanted to see more of these characters (especially after seeing the ending), would not be able to do so. Just like another young adult novel adaptation of Fallen, I think the movie might have been better of being made into TV series so we could see the complete story.
Anyway, for those of you who want to see a light movie about teenagers with super power (but not superheroes), this might be an alternative choice. It might feel a bit too young for the more adult audience but my wife and I were quite OK with that (perhaps because we really feel young at heart. LOL). However, if you expect to see a lot of those super powers being used to fight and a nonstop action, this one would definitely not suit your taste, especially if you do not like it if the story was not totally resolved in 1 movie. The choice is yours.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3 out of 5 stars
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