The Demon Bear Is Coming in THE NEW MUTANTS Trailer

In the year 2000, Fox Studios released their very first X-Men movie which has turned out to be a relatively important debut. There are a lot of people who would point to that film as the one that started our current collective obsession with big screen superheroes. It proved that superhero films could actually be good films, that they didn’t have to be cheesy B-movies with low budget special effects; they could be well made films that feature incredible actors portraying fleshed-out characters.

In other words, superhero movies could be good. Really good.

And now, we get a few superhero films a year with each of them running the gamut from spy thriller to romance to western to madcap buddy comedy. Case in point, Fox Studios 11th X-Men film, The New Mutants, which, according to the trailer released today, appears to be scary as hell.

We’ve previously heard the film referred to as a horror film, with our team of young mutants all essentially stuck in a haunted house, and now seeing the trailer — yes, that is exactly what this is.

In the trailer, we see Wolfsbane (Maisie Williams), Cannonball (Charlie Heaton), Sunspot (Henry Zaga), Magik (Anya Taylor-Joy), and Mirage (Blu Hunt) — all kept in government run sanitorium for mutants. However, not all is what it seems here; something is trying to kill them. It’s unclear what exactly is going on here, what exactly is stalking them, but we have a theory — this is all Danielle “Mirage” Moonstar’s fault. Her mutant power is that she can psychically tap into your greatest fears and then bring them to life — at least to you. Essentially, she can see your nightmares and then make you live within them.

And there are plenty of nightmares to bring to life here. Rahne “Wolfsbane” Sinclair, for instance, is a werewolf terrified by her bloody and brutal power, begging her God to take this curse away from her. At one point, we see her entering into a bathroom with a “W” branded on her back. While this is more than likely an actual thing that has happened to her, and not a nightmare, it seems to be playing with that fear of transformation.

Ilyana “Magik” Rasputin is a mutant who can create teleportation discs, but she also has a strange connection to a hell-like dimension called Limbo where the demon Belasco resides. Again, like with Wolfsbane, we don’t see anything explicit here, but at one point we do see her and Cannonball slowly entering a bedroom to find a strange creature in there wearing a creepy white mask. As it pulls the mask away, the face behind it has a demon-like appearance.

Sam Guthrie enters a laundry room to examine a banging in a washing machine, only to see a fiery hand explode from it. We later see a haunting scene inside a miasma-filled mine with miners, picks in hand, approaching the camera. It’s easy to assume that this is all seen from Sam’s perspective, who comes from a family of coal miners, and that his greatest fear is a claustrophobic one.

We don’t see too much of Sunspot’s fears (maybe he’s in the washer?) or Mirage’s, but we do get a brief shot of Mirage out in the snow, which is an allusion to the Demon Bear Saga we’ve heard linked to this film more than a few times. In fact, speaking of the Demon Bear, Mirage has a small wooden bear on a necklace she’s wearing in one of the last shots of the trailer. Our guess — this is foreshadowing. Once the kids all defeat their own nightmares, they’ve got one final boss battle with the Demon Bear, who’s taken Mirage away.