USA, 2023
Review:
JA Kerswell
DEPARTING SENIORS is a likeable - if ultimately a little underwhelming - riff on traditional slasher themes. A masked killer is bumping off bullies at a high school and making it look like suicide. The twist is that a bullied student develops psychic abilities after hitting his head, which gives him glimpses into the future of who is next on the chopping block.
Springhurst High is still reeling from the supposed suicide of a popular student - who we see being slashed by someone in black wearing a Greek-style tragedy/comedy-drama mask moments after he finishes harassing a student. Javier (Ignacio Diaz-Silverio) is counting down the days until graduation to escape the homophobic bullying orchestrated by acid-tongued star student Ginny (Maisie Merlock) and her jock boyfriend Trevor (Cameron Scott Roberts). Javier takes solace in his friendship with his spunky best friend Bianca (Ireon Roach) and his sympathetic English teacher (Yani Gellman - an actor who has a slasher pedigree with his role in JASON X (2001)). He also only has days left to act on his crush on new student William (Ryan Foreman). To complicate matters, Javier has been having a fling with Brad (Sasha Kuznetsov) - a closeted member of the clique of bullies. When he outs Brad, whilst confronting the group, Javier falls down a set of stairs trying to outrun his aggressors and is knocked unconscious.
Waking in the hospital, Javier is stunned to discover that he has developed psychometry - which, as Bianca explains, means that he can see flashes of the future of whoever he touches or if he touches an object that belongs to them. Having only days before wished death to his bullies, Javier quickly realises that he needs to utilise his unexpected new powers to save the very people he recently despised. It is a race to convince his bullies that they are in danger and to find out who is behind the mask …
DEPARTING SENIORS makes the most of its medium budget. Its attractive scope photography perhaps suggests that this was originally destined for a limited cinema release. It obviously owes a debt to films such as HEATHERS (1988) - another movie where murders were mistaken for teen suicide albeit without a slasher angle. However, it is nowhere near as gloriously eccentric nor its barbs as bitchy sharp. The script also looks back to the self-reflection of the SCREAM series with characters referencing horror movies, such as the adaptation of Stephen King's THE DEAD ZONE (1983) that deal with psychic abilities. But by this point, this self-referential approach feels a little long in the tooth. On the plus side, the film boasts some good performances and does well with the misdirection as to who the killer might be - although his or her identity becomes pretty easy to guess once you rule out the other obvious suspects. It also smartly shows its characters as largely not one-dimensional - with the bullies becoming victims and even managing to engender some sympathy for their plight. However, despite its premise, the is surprisingly light on the slasher action. The film’s climax - which, appropriately enough given the killer’s mask - takes places at the school’s theatre. Even here the film is a little restrained when the material perhaps calls for it to go over-the-top with high, campy drama.
The biggest head-scratcher of DEPARTING SENIORS is why a film made in 2022 and released in 2023 is set in 2019? 2019 is repeatedly shown throughout the movie on posters and banners. There doesn’t appear to be any reason for this and it merely might suggest to audiences that - albeit falsely - it had sat on the shelf for four years. It’s a strange choice that doesn’t make commercial or any other sense.
There’s much to like about DEPARTING SENIORS and it is still a marginal recommend. Having a gay protagonist would have been unthinkable in an early 80s slasher and it’s good to see how far we’ve come. The film looks great, but it never quite achieves the energetic lunacy of the best modern takes on the slasher genre.
BODY COUNT 3:
Female 0 / Male 3
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