The New Mutants

You know what? It's nowhere near the disaster you'd probably imagine.

Even a mangled bit of Whedonese about a toad struck by lightning could benefit a superhero story this starved for character.

The concept behind The New Mutants is a solid, intriguing one that could've reinvigorated the familiar origin superhero story. Instead, Boone opts for genericism, ending the X-Men franchise with an angsty-teen whimper.

The New Mutants tramples over its own comic book credentials in order to chase after a concept already more convincingly dealt with by The Chilling Adventures of Sabrina or Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

An idiotic, nonsensical, and weirdly cheap attempt to take the stories in a new direction.

Fox's last X-Men movie is an unholy mess... Out of the wreckage, a cult classic has been born.

Points for trying something new, but it's now nice to know that the future of the franchise is now safely back in the hands of Marvel.

It may be no Logan but there are at least hints of the same cloth in its construction. For many this might not be the swan song everyone wanted before Marvel stepped in, but neither does it feel like the cinematic equivalent of a death rattle either.

Save for the novel lesbian romance between two of the characters, the characters' angst-ridden interactions seem secondhand, while the story's thrills and scares lean heavily on earlier films, too.

The intention to explore a mash-up of haunted-house horror and young-adult drama instead of spandex pyrotechnics is a worthy one, but this swansong to Fox's X-Men franchise sadly fails to deliver on its premise.