The New Mutants (2020)

What makes The New Mutants worth your time is how boldly it shrinks the superhero canvas down to a pressure-cooker haunted-house story, where powers feel less like wish fulfillment and more like wounds that won’t stop bleeding. Josh Boone leans into a moody, contained vibe—part sci-fi captivity thriller, part PG-13 horror—letting dread seep in through corridors, flickering lights, and the creeping sense that the real enemy might be what these teens carry inside. The young cast sells that vulnerability beautifully, with Blu Hunt and Maisie Williams giving the film a surprisingly tender heartbeat amid the scares and sudden bursts of action. It’s not for viewers expecting big, quippy spectacle, but if you’re curious about a comic-book movie that tries something stranger, darker, and more intimate, this one is an easy recommendation.

The New Mutants is clearly trying to mash up an X-Men-style origin story with a contained, teen-horror “trapped in a facility” thriller, and on paper that’s a fun pivot from the usual superhero noise. The problem is it rarely commits hard enough to either lane: the scares are mostly PG-13-safe, the action feels underpowered, and the character work often sketches trauma instead of digging into it. There are bright spots—Maisie Williams brings sincerity, the cast has decent chemistry, and the concept of fears becoming real can be genuinely creepy in moments—but the movie plays out in a fairly generic, forgettable way. If you want sharp horror, bold comic-book spectacle, or deep character development, you’ll likely feel shortchanged; if you’re okay with a moody, lightweight spin-off with a few eerie images, it may pass the time.