The New Mutants has long been touted as the first X-Men movie to truly embrace the horror aspects of the franchise. During a press conference, director Josh Boone revealed that filming the movie in Medfield State Hospital, which was a functioning asylum at one point, made the work of acting terrified during scenes much easier.

"There are several crewmembers who had weird experiences there, had to be walked to their car at night because they were scared to walk there by themselves after they'd been in the buildings all day. People definitely had weird encounters."

"And the groundskeeper that worked there for years had some really awful stories to tell us [about] why we shouldn't walk alone at night. I remember him putting his arm around me, and he's like, 'See that basketball court over there?' I was like, 'Yeah.' He goes, 'The state made that for little Jimmy when he came here.' I was like, 'Oh, they made it for a kid. That's so sweet,' and he was like, 'He stabbed his family.'"

The rest of the cast attested to the fact that the negative energy associated with the Hospital took its toll on their mental state, with actor Henry Zaga mentioning a strange "smell" that "just got into your soul before you even thought about it." Meanwhile, Alice Braga noted that "filming at night was kind of scary. I wouldn't walk by myself." Even when another actor, Anya Taylor-Joy, compared filming to attending college with your friends, Boone had an alarming take on the analogy.

"It was like a college experience, but where the set that you were on, somebody had hung themselves there maybe 40 years before... I remember in the attic that we shot in on the first day, that was a place where somebody had hung themselves. They said it might even have been more than one person. Because the place that we shot in was 150 years old."

It almost feels like the movie should have just been two hours of watching the cast and crew of The New Mutants wandering around the abandoned insane asylum in the dark while trying to ignore otherworldy smells and influences. Hopefully, the upcoming movie will carry with it some of that dark influence so audiences also get to share in the experience that the cast and crew had to endure.

Directed and co-written by Josh Boone, The New Mutants stars Maisie Williams as Rahne Sinclair/Wolfsbane, Anya Taylor-Joy as Illyana Rasputin/Magik, Charlie Heaton as Sam Guthrie/Cannonball, Henry Zaga as Roberto da Costa/Sunspot, Blu Hunt as Danielle Moonstar/Mirage and Alice Braga as Dr. Cecilia Reyes.

The movie tells the tale of a group of young adults with special abilities who are taken to a government facility that claims to be helping them control their powers. But the teens soon discover something much more sinister is going on with regards to the hospital and their presence there. The New Mutants arrives in theaters on Aug. 28. Tickets are on sale right Now. This news comes to us from Comic Book resources.