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In the canon of high school-set slashers, Departing Seniors is a moderate achiever — the middle of the pack. Jose Nateras’ screenplay massages LGBTQ+ themes into an adorable-awkward-angsty teen romance threatened by deadly obstacles (outside cruel bigotry). It’s refreshingly genuine in terms of treating queer relationships with normalcy, but schoolyard slasher tension dulls without sharp execution. Director Clare Cooney’s feature debut is more competent than confident, relying on select performances and cheeky metatextual callbacks to overcompensate for a less successful balancing of subgenres.

It’s seven days until graduation at Springhurst High, and Javier (Ignacio Diaz-Silverio) is just trying to survive until college. He’s gay, he’s Mexican-American, and he’s surrounded by small-minded jocks who mock anything outside their suburban status quo. Javier’s bestie Bianca (Ireon Roach) is his rock, willing to beat an athlete bloody if they utter a single insult. Unfortunately, when Bianca isn’t around after school,...

"We can't just let him die." "Well, actually, we could..." Dark Sky Films has revealed an official trailer for an indie horror comedy creation called Departing Seniors, an original idea from writer / actor Jose Nateras. This premiered at FrightFest London and the Chicago Film Festival last year, with a release in February in theaters and on VOD coming up soon. Following an act of bullying, witty high school senior Javier develops psychic abilities which he must use to stop a mysterious serial killer targeting his classmates. Described as a slasher inspired by "The Dead Zone meets Scream." Ignacio Diaz-Silverio stars, with Maisie Merlock, Ireon Roach, Yani Gellman, Sasha Kuznetsov, Cameron Scott Roberts, and Ryan Foreman. It's also the feature directorial debut of actress Clare Cooney. This looks rather generic, of course, but with some fun high school humor. The main kid looks a lot like Alex Wolff, almost like they wanted to cast him.

We’ve seen Groundhog’s Day as a slasher with Happy Death Day, It’s a Wonderful Life as a slasher with It’s a Wonderful Knife, Freaky Friday as a slasher with Freaky, and Back to the Future as a slasher with Totally Killer. Next in the “this movie, but it’s a slasher” line-up is Departing Seniors, which mixes the high school slasher set-up with elements from Stephen King’s The Dead Zone. Dark Sky Films will be giving Departing Seniors a limited theatrical and VOD release on February 2nd, and with that date right around the corner a trailer has arrived online. You can check it out in the embed above.

The feature directorial debut of actress Clare Cooney, Departing Seniors was written by actor Jose Nateras and centers on high school student Javier, who doesn’t exactly fit in with the popular kids as a queer Mexican-American.