A lot of geeky, imaginative kids grew up with their faces jammed inside a copy of Madeleine L'Engle's book A Wrinkle in Time. It's the story of a family of science and math geniuses that gets tangled up in a physics experiment that has metaphysical implications. This new film adaptation has the perfect balance of creeping horror and gorgeous, Wizard of Oz-like wonderscapes.

A Wrinkle in Time is the first book in a trilogy that is basically the forerunner to the His Dark Materials books by Philip Pullman. It's science fiction that takes seriously the idea that sufficiently advanced technology looks like magic. Our hero Meg's father has discovered how to use a five-dimensional tesseract to "fold time" and travel instantaneously across vast distances in space. When he goes missing, Meg is visited by three mysterious women who are basically aliens, witches, and scientists rolled into one. They tell Meg that only she can rescue her father, so she "tessers" across dimensions to find him, accompanied by her little brother Charles Wallace and their friend Calvin (both geniuses, of course).

Along the way, they encounter terrifying and amazing alien worlds, and they eventually head toward a showdown on an authoritarian world run by a computer. We catch glimpses of this world in the trailer, where all the children are bouncing their balls in unison. It seems like some of the book's adventures will be preserved for the movie.

A Wrinkle in Time is directed by Ava DuVernay, who previously directed Selma and Middle of Nowhere, which won a Sundance Best Director Award. She's best known for brilliant character studies, and that's perfect for this coming-of-age story in which bookworm Meg has to find her inner action hero. Plus, the visuals look appropriately weird and stunning.

The important thing about A Wrinkle in Time is that it's an Oz-like adventure that gets really dark and philosophical. Meg isn't going into some candy-colored fantasy world. It only looks like that because humans can't grasp the scientific realities of the universe. The more they understand, the more terrifying it gets.

A Wrinkle in Time will be in theaters March 9, 2018. I can't wait.

Listing image by Disney