The New Mutants Assemble In Terrifying First Trailer

What do you get when you blend X-Men with a dash of Stranger Things spookiness and a heaping dose of horror? The New Mutants. 

20th Century Fox has finally released the first look at the X-Men spinoff film, and it shows that The New Mutants is essentially a teen slasher flick, but with powerful could-be superheroes at the center of it all. 

The creep factor is established early on, with the footage panning down the dimly-lit industrial hallways of a medical facility and showing Alice Braga's Dr. Cecilia Reyes telling the group of teens that they are being held against their will because they are dangerous. "Did you know baby rattlesnakes are more dangerous than adult ones?" she asks, likening their unharnessed abilities to the unpredictable nature of a poisonous creature who hasn't yet understood how to control itself. "They haven't learned how much venom to secrete."

But who exactly are these five fledgling mutants? There's Henry Zaga (Teen Wolf) as the suave Roberto da Costa/Sunspot; Blu Hunt (The Originals) as Native American mutant Danielle Moonstar/Mirage (also known as Psyche in the Marvel comics); Anya Taylor-Joy (Split) as Colossus' teenaged sister Illyana Nikolievna Rasputina/Magik, a young sorceress who uses discs to teleport; Charlie Heaton (Stranger Things) as Southern boy Sam Guthrie/Cannonball; and Maisie Williams (Game of Thrones) as Scottish lass Rahne Sinclair/Wolfsbane, who struggles to find middle ground between her religion and her supernatural ability to transform into a wolf. 

Check out the teaser trailer in the video above.

Directed by The Fault in Our Stars helmer Josh Boone, The New Mutants features a distinct tone different from anything fans have seen in the X-Men film universe before. Based on the trailer alone, the film certainly seems more like a young actor-led horror romp set in a superhero framework rather than an out-and-out mutant movie with all the standard genre fixings. And Boone's previous statements back that up 100 percent. Earlier this year, he said that The New Mutants would be a "full-fledged horror movie set within the X-Men universe," with "no costumes [and] no super-villains." Boone added, "We're trying to do something very, very different."

Boone also indicated that the movie will be based on a New Mutants comics run that began when artist Bill Sienkiewicz joined the Chris Claremont-created series for No. 18 in 1984. The director said the comics became "a darker and more surreal and impressionistic X-Men series than we'd ever seen before" with Sienkiewicz, feeling like "Stephen King meets John Hughes." 

And while The New Mutants will depart from the tone of the core X-Men movies, similar to what Deadpool and Logan did, Boone assured fans that he grew up as a die-hard comic fan and takes his responsibility as director of The New Mutants extremely seriously. "You can't have a bigger nerd or fan making this," said Boone. "It's so important to me. I'm not the 12-year-old who decided to write Stephen King a letter and loved Marvel Comics anymore, but I try to hold myself accountable to that kid. Because that kid is what keeps me from becoming a Hollywood whore. I look back and think: 'Would he think this would be cool? Would he proud of me? Did I fulfill the dream we had when we were kids?'"

We can see just how spooky The New Mutants will be when the film hits theaters on April 13, 2018.