October marks the onset of autumn leaves, apple cider and, yes, a time for visiting haunted houses and binge-watching frightening movies.
But even with the timing of its release, the trailer for the next X-Men installment, The New Mutants, likely surprised many Marvel fans. Last Friday, Oct. 13, 20th Century Fox started teasing what looks more like a horror movie than a superhero one.
The truth is it promises to be a dense combination of both genres. And appropriately enough, the film will hit theaters on the next Friday the 13th, namely April 13, 2018.
The beginning of the trailer shows a creepy medical facility, then shifts to a picture of a graveyard. What ensues is a trailer full of jump scares, ominous faces popping out of a wall and strange medical treatments.
As one mutant puts it, “This isn’t a hospital…it’s a haunted house.”
Superhero movies have incorporated some elements of horror before. There was Norman Osborn imagining that the Green Goblin is speaking to him in 2002’s Spider Man. Last year, there was Bruce Wayne’s creepy bat dream in Batman v Superman.
But with The New Mutants, director Josh Boone takes the likes of those and elongates them into a full-fledged horror flick. Other movies made horror the light drizzle of syrup on its superhero sundae. Now Boone will oversee something more along the lines of a 50-50 two-flavor twist.
And he is already planning to dish up more of the same after this.
“These are all going to be horror movies, and they’re all be their own distinct kind of horror movies,” Boone told IGN on The New Mutants being the first in a trilogy 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.”
Superhero movies have incorporated some elements of horror before. But with The New Mutants, director Josh Boone takes the likes of those and elongates them into a full-fledged horror flick.
Boone, the director of 2014’s The Fault in Our Stars, follows the footsteps in an interesting trend in X-Men related movies. First, there was the comedy Deadpool, which packed timely, irreverent humor and proved an R-rated superhero film can succeed.
For his performance as the titular character, Ryan Reynolds received a Critics’ Choice Award and earned him a Golden Globe nomination. In addition, Deadpool became both the highest-grossing R-rated and X-Men films. It has a second installment set to debut next June. And
Following that precedent, Marvel continued a unique string of X-Men movies with the release of Logan this past March. Logan, an R-rated Western superhero drama, concluded Hugh Jackman’s run as the popular Wolverine character, and is widely considered one of the best superhero movies of all time.
These two examples should not imply that The New Mutants will be as successful as these films. But Boone has assembled a cast of young actors who have portrayed many memorable characters already. Now they will portray powers that should play well in a horror movie.
Maisie Williams of Game of Thrones fame will star as Wolfsbane, a mutant who can transform into a werewolf. Anya Taylor-Joy, who starred in Split, plays Magik, whose powers include sorcery and teleportation. Henry Zaga from the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why plays Sunspot, who can manipulate solar energy.
To round out the protagonists, Charlie Heaton’s Cannonball can propel himself through the air while Blu Hunt’s Mirage can create illusions that play on people’s fears.
All five of these nascent heroes will have to learn to control their powers and possibly escape this haunted house.
With this installment, Marvel is clearly taking a risk by dabbling into the horror genre. But if recent history tells us anything, it could very well lead to a New Mutants trilogy.
Leave a Reply