The New Mutants Trailer Is Here and It Is Freaking Scary

The X-Men spinoff movie New Mutants looks like it’s going full-tilt horror.

In our spookiest month, Fox has just dropped the official trailer for The New Mutants. The trailer suggests that director Josh Boone and his cast of young superpowered people have made a film quite unlike any X-Men property we’ve seen before. This appears to be a straight-up horror movie, plus our protagonists are discovering their mutant abilities. Complete with an ominous cover of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall,” a dimly lit creepy hospital, and menacing doctors, this trailer straight-up terrified me first thing this morning.

I’m not a horror fan, but I can still admire that the atmosphere here looks impressively freaky, and I love that we’re starting to see more and more movies that break the old superheroes vs. some cackling big bad with a plot to destroy the world mold. I’m not alone. The New Mutants‘ YouTube comment section is full of people saying things like, “Y’all keep experimenting with new genres rather than churn out the same old predictable superhero format AND I AM HERE FOR IT.” Fox is the studio that brought us Deadpool and Logan, and the success and acclaim for those movies show that envelopes can be pushed and fans are glad of it. Haven’t we already had enough cookie-cutter X-Men movies to last a lifetime?

You might recognize Game of Thrones‘ Maisie Williams as Wolfsbane, and the other New Mutants trying to navigate this scary situation are Magik, Cannonball, Sunspot, and Mirage. Alice Braga plays Dr. Cecilia Reyes. Here’s the quick summary: “Five young mutants, just discovering their abilities while held in a secret facility against their will, fight to escape their past sins and save themselves.” Based on the characters and comics created by Chris Claremont, these are not the Xavier Academy-attending teenagers we’ve seen before. Maybe they’ll get there someday—if they can get the hell out of this ridiculously terrifying hospital.

This may not be the film for me, but I respect what Fox is doing, and if you like both horror and superheroes, well, I have a movie ticket to sell you in April.

(image: screengrab)

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Kaila Hale-Stern

Kaila Hale-Stern (she/her) is a content director, editor, and writer who has been working in digital media for more than fifteen years. She started at TMS in 2016. She loves to write about TV—especially science fiction, fantasy, and mystery shows—and movies, with an emphasis on Marvel. Talk to her about fandom, queer representation, and Captain Kirk. Kaila has written for io9, Gizmodo, New York Magazine, The Awl, Wired, Cosmopolitan, and once published a Harlequin novel you'll never find.

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