I didn’t want to invoke the leader of the Germany’s National Socialist Party in the title, even less so that bland and inauthentic Netflix series. Nevertheless, the final moment of Darkest Minds was too much not to: our earnest heroine (Ms. Amandla Stenberg), raises her her orange painted hand in one-armed salute, and the masses of children gathered in a stadium (blue, green, yellow) do likewise. Hands in unison to their superior leader, but there’s a rainbow.

Hitler didn’t think of that, did he?

Now one can easily and lazily criticism this type of problematic imagery, but it’s really just garden variety incompetence. The film – so bad I thought the trailer was for a new, well, a new Netflix show, starts with the worn premise – kids with superpowers – and thinks the way to make it original is to keep adding more and more concepts.

As we work our way into No More Babies (Children of Men), post-apocalyptic (uh, Everything), Overlong Sexual Dance Scenes (that’s the Matrix movie you steal from?), Telekinetically Lifting Snack Foods For The Girl (that’s the Star Wars film you steal from?), Children Are Better At Society Than Adults, (Lord of the Flies – I think they think that was what that movie was about), Girl Who Must Choose Between Two Boys (please stop making these movies), and Konkentration Kamps 4 Kidz (the vastly superior and makes this movie irrelevant The Girl with All the Gifts), they are technically correct. Having this kind of smooshed finger painting over Damien Hirst on fire is original.

No. I didn’t say a Damien Hirst

I was in Brest, and could have waited three days, and seen it for free in Rennes. Then I calculated the gas money from Saint-Briac to Rennes and back. So I saved €5. By spending €9. Basic economics.

The result of this foie gras fried parmesan milkshake is mistakenly fun, as it manages to give rise to implausibilities within an film that’s already impossible. All the children of the world are dying? Well, that means we should put the remaining children in camps. We don’t want to continue this whole ‘human race’ thing.

Okay, I agree with that. But now that they’re in the camps, they have superpowers, so…let’s have them make shoes.

Shoes.

The Oranges are the dangerous ones, since they can control other people’s minds. So we really need to have a special protocol in place to prevent us from being killed by oranges. What do we do? We ask them if they are oranges.

I can’t stop saying the word orange.

And so the characters bounce about the environment, trying to figure out what story they’re in until one of them becomes Hitler. Obviously a product of a-scene-where-ism, but united by a common theme: children are the greatest victims because of how amazing they are (no doubt your children especially), and each crazy story idea reflects this.

This is unfortunately capped by Ms. Stenberg’s revenge on the main baddie Ms. Gwendoline Christie. Does she round up kids on the post-apoco wasteland to be killed? Well, we want the human race to survive, and we love kids, so of course she does.

Anyway,

Ms. Stenberg plants the idea in her mind that she has to keep walking in one direction until she reaches the ocean and then keep walking until she drowns. It’s an awful and sadistic death, reminding one of The Equalizer, where we as the audience are seemingly so collectively filled with rage, the hero has become Freddy.

Kids with superpowers and hormones and the wildly misplaced and adorable belief that they really are superheroes. That’s the movie I would have liked to see.