We’ve known for a while that Fox’s upcoming New Mutants film was going to be more of a horror film than a “traditional” comic book movie like the one that launched the cinematic X-Men franchise. But actually seeing the movie’s first trailer makes it clear: this has the potential to be something very different.
While Marvel’s original New Mutants comics were about a younger generation of gifted students coming together at Charles Xavier’s school for the first time, the Josh Boone-directed film appears to be set largely in an eerie asylum where young mutants are kept in cells and observed for study. The trailer is fleeting and light on details, but it opens with a voice over from Dr. Cecilia Reyes (Alice Braga,) interviewing a new subject about how much they know about mutants. Reyes asks the child if they’ve ever hurt someone, and the footage jumps from a dimly-lit hallway to a graveyard full of headstones only marked with crosses and numbers. Reyes asks her subject if they’ve ever experienced anything “abnormal,” and the shot cuts to Reyes sitting in front of an array of monitors, calmly watching other children located throughout the facility.
Baby rattlesnakes, Reyes explains to a restrained Danielle Moonstar (Blu Hunt,) are actually more dangerous than adult ones because they don’t yet know how to control the amount of venom they use while biting. That, Reyes explains as we see the other kids seemingly trapped in the house of horrors, is why they’re all there—because they’re dangerous.
The New Mutants hits theaters April 13, 2018.