We’ve been told over the past few months that Fox’s X-Men spinoff, The New Mutants, would be a very horror-oriented film, but it wasn’t until last night’s chilling first trailer dropped that we really understood just how damn scary the movie’s set to be, with the footage we got teasing chilling moments and disturbing imagery galore.
Forget the costumes, the supervillains and the plans for world domination, New Mutants is a straight-up horror flick that largely takes place within the ice-white walls of a governmental research facility, where five young mutants are being held against their will. They’re hormonal, they’re powerful, and they’re ready to wreak havoc on just about anyone who crosses them.
Similar to how Logan scaled back all of the grand, apocalyptic story elements scattered across Fox’s core X-Men franchise, Josh Boone’s spinoff sets itself apart as an intimate, relatively self-contained pic about five gifted teenagers who aren’t trying to save the world so much as they’re trying to save themselves. Not only that, but if the director gets his way and The New Mutants proves successful, it’ll be followed by two sequels, thus making it a trilogy.
Speaking to IGN this week, Boone revealed his plans by saying the following:
We brought it to FOX as a trilogy of films, really all based on that long run by Sienkiewicz, and kind of incorporates some stuff from later issues in the ’80s. These are all going to be horror movies, and they’re all be their own distinct kind of horror movies. This is certainly the ‘rubber-reality’ supernatural horror movie. The next one will be a completely different kind of horror movie. Our take was just go examine the horror genre through comic book movies and make each one its own distinct sort of horror film. Drawing from the big events that we love in the comics.
While it obviously remains to be seen whether or not the director gets to complete his trilogy, this is hugely exciting to hear. I think it’s safe to say that last night’s trailer surprised everyone – in a good way – and there’s a very positive buzz starting to build around the pic. After all, the comic book movie genre is one that so often puts out films cut from the same cloth, so when we see something unique like this, it’s a welcome breath of fresh air.
We don’t need to tell you that Logan‘s western style, The Dark Knight’s mob thriller vibe and Deadpool‘s fourth wall bustin’ parody resulted in some of the best comic book movies around. Hopefully, the horror spin applied to The New Mutants ensures that it’ll turn out to be just as successful when it storms into theatres on April 13th, 2018.