DEPARTING SENIORS movie poster | ©2024 Dark Sky Films

Rating: Not Rated
Stars: Ignacio Diaz-Silverio, Yani Gellman, Ireon Roach, Cameron Scott Roberts, Maisie Merlock, Ryan Foreman, Sasha Kuznetsov, Cole Steeves
Writer: Jose Nateras
Director: Clare Cooney
Distributor: Dark Sky Films
Release Date: February 2, 2024

DEPARTING SENIORS almost immediately scores points by centering on two characters who would normally be on the supporting sidelines: gay Latino A student Javi Campos (Ignacio Diaz-Silverio) and his emotionally obtuse bestie Bianca (Ireon Roach). Due to being gay, Latino, and an A student, Javi is the target of bullying jocks who are his high school peers.

However, when Javi is quasi-accidentally pushed down the stairs and wake up in the hospital, he discovers – to his shock and bewilderment – that he is now subject to psychic flashes.

This happens about a third of the way through DEPARTING SENIORS. Director Clare Cooney and writer Jose Nateras establish that they’re in the masked slasher business with the opening sequence. Javi is getting nearly drowned by Phil (Cole Steeves) at the high school pool. Javi escapes Phil – and then a dark-clothed figure in a hoodie and a white mask comes in and kills Phil, but makes it look like a suicide.

After this incident, we follow Javi as he tries to navigate the last week before graduation, getting encouragement from sympathetic literature teacher Mr. Arda (Yani Gellman), crushing on fellow student William (Ryan Foreman) – who may be interested! – and enduring the torments of athletes Trevor (Cameron Scott Roberts) and Brad (Sasha Kuznetsov), plus Trevor’s ferociously resentful girlfriend Ginny (Maisie Merlock). Ginny thinks that Javi’s valedictorian slot and college scholarship (even though she financially doesn’t need the latter and he does) are rightfully hers, and she’s happy to be petty about it.

Whether or not Javi’s fall was intended by the other kids, he soon finds that contact with people or with objects shows him glimpses of past and future. He cannot reliably summon these, but sees enough to know there’s a killer on the loose. But who is it? And with the school’s traditional annual Lock-In (a sleepover at the school) for “departing seniors” about to occur, how high might the victim count go?

Filmmakers Cooney and Nateras set up the characters and their multilayered personalities so well that it’s arguable they didn’t need to add the psychic twist. Javi as a responsible human being, and Bianca, as someone easily outraged by injustice, are written as though they could figure things out on their own.

There’s also a deftly sketched portrait of high school altogether, with car-driving students looking down on bus-takers, plus homophobia, racism, looksism, and all the other social woes that come with adolescence (and unfortunately don’t end there). On the other hand, there is the deep closeness and compassion that are likewise part of teen life.

Diaz-Silverio is natural and endearing, and Roach has superb timing. The rest of the cast is versatile as well, playing their parts so that they can be read as innocent or guilty.

DEPARTING SENIORS is not rated, but the violence and gore quotient is PG-13, if that; it’s no more than what might be seen in an episode of a network procedural show. (Since the killer’s m.o. is to make it seem as though the victims killed themselves, anything ultra-bloody or painful would suggest murder and defeat the purpose.)

With its beginning and its plot, DEPARTING SENIORS technically qualifies as a horror movie. However, it feels more like a good teen comedy with a few well-placed deaths to give it additional shape.

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