20th Century FoxIn Deadpool & Wolverine’s closing-credits tribute to the 20th Century Fox era of Marvel movies, the only film that doesn’t get any screen time is The New Mutants. Released five years ago this week, The New Mutants was seen as an ignominious end for Fox’s X-Men films, and Disney certainly treated it that way after swallowing it up as part of their purchase of the studio.After being delayed for more than two years, The New Mutants opened in theaters to fulfill Disney’s contractual obligations and was largely received with derision by both critics and the few audience members who bothered to show up. While it may not be a lost masterpiece, it’s hardly the atrocity that its reputation suggests, and there’s no reason it shouldn’t take its rightful place among the highly variable mutant movies made during this landmark period in superhero filmmaking.Although it’s informed by the continuity established by 2000’s X-Men and its follow-ups, The New Mutants also stands on its own, which remains a rarity for superhero movies. There are a handful of references to the X-Men, but anyone unfamiliar with those films can jump right in and appreciate The New Mutants as a coming-of-age horror movie with a slightly retro feel. Director and co-writer Josh Boone doesn’t simply place new, younger characters into the franchise template — he offers something genuinely different to a series that was already up to 12 movies.The New Mutants is set primarily in a single location, an eerily empty and rundown institution that’s the opposite of the shiny, high-tech Xavier Institute the X-Men enjoy. “This isn’t a hospital — it’s a cage,” says rebellious teen mutant Illyana Rasputin (Anya Taylor-Joy) to new arrival Dani Moonstar (Blu Hunt), who wakes up there after a tornado destroys the Cheyenne reservation where she and her family lived. That simple statement expresses the movie’s core theme, as Illyana, Dani, and their fellow residents try to learn the truth of why they’re being held captive by the suspiciously helpful Dr. Cecilia Reyes (Alice Braga).Illyana and Sam explore their eerie surroundings. | 20th Century FoxWhile The New Mutants eventually builds to a superhero battle of sorts, it’s influenced more by the long tradition of horror movies set in similar institutions. Characters with dangerous powers are often kept locked up, ostensibly for their own good, while unscrupulous scientists run unethical experiments to harness or neutralize their abilities.Superhero comics were a clear inspiration for movies like 1987’s A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors, and Boone returns the favor, with echoes of Dream Warriors, Hellbound: Hellraiser II, Firestarter, and other horror favorites. Just a year earlier, M. Night Shyamalan’s superhero remix Glass explored some of the same concepts, with Taylor-Joy herself in a supporting role.That’s not to say that Boone always gets it right, and there are plenty of slow moments as the mutants gradually put the pieces of their predicament together. Hunt has relaxed, sweet chemistry with Maisie Williams as werewolf-like mutant Rahne Sinclair, but their burgeoning romance proceeds fitfully before being sidelined for the action climax. Roberto da Costa (Henry Zaga) and Sam Guthrie (Charlie Heaton) round out the teen quintet, but their character development is even flimsier.Maisie Williams and Blu Hunt have relaxed, sweet chemistry as Rahne and Dani. | 20th Century FoxThere’s just enough background to make it meaningful when the characters’ deepest fears start to manifest themselves, and Boone doesn’t hold back on the scares. The Slender Man-looking monsters from Illyana’s nightmares are especially unsettling, and Taylor-Joy gives Illyana a sense of vulnerability beneath her confrontational exterior. The message about confronting and overcoming trauma is simple but powerful, and Boone neatly ties up the story and the themes within about 90 minutes.Unlike Fox’s disastrous 2015 body-horror take on Fantastic Four, The New Mutants makes its genre trappings work for the characters, and it never feels like the superhero and horror elements have been awkwardly grafted together. The special effects may falter in the climax, but Boone also doesn’t have the obligation of depicting a world-ending event. The final monster poses a personal threat, and the characters overcome it by asserting the independence that Dr. Reyes has been trying to destroy. Like the movie they’re in, the new mutants are misfits who aren’t expected to survive, but they persevere in the face of that cruelty and dismissal.