A 91-year-old vampire, Raven Highgate (Tiera Skovbye), who looks like she is 16, is recruited by San Francisco Police detective Mackenzie Roth (Andrea Roth) to work undercover at prestigious Winter Academy in an attempt to solve the mysterious deaths of several students. Befriended by financial aid student Connor Bower (Tyler Johnston), she also strives to make friends with the "uber popular" clique—Brandon (Jeffrey Ballard), Jared (Richard Harmon), Alexis (Siobhan Williams), and Trisha (Emmalyn Estrada)—hoping to get some answers from them. But they have other ideas.
Forever 16 is based on an idea by executive producers Stanton W. Kamens and Jeffrey Schenck. Screenwriters Peter Sullivan and Jodi Ticknor fleshed out the idea and came up with the screenplay. The film plays like a pilot but, so far, no additional information about future films or a series is available.
Knowing that Raven is a vampire, viewers already know that Raven was drinking blood from her sippee bottle. However, Raven tells Alexis that it's a beet smoothie.
Very little back story is provided in the movie. It's hinted that Mac's husband and daughter were killed by a vampire, which is how she knew about them. Consequently, she and Captain Gibson (Peter Bryant) have been tracking down, recruiting, testing, and training vampires for their elite force. Raven tested out at the top of the list.
