Departing Seniors trailer turns The Dead Zone into a high school slasher

Trailer: Departing Seniors, which mixes elements of Stephen King’s The Dead Zone with a high school slasher, gets a February release

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. But he might be the only one who can save them. After an act of bullying sends Javier to the hospital, he begins experiencing visions that foresee glimpses of shocking murders at his school right before they happen. Now, in between navigating the social hierarchies and prejudices of clique culture, Javier and his best friend Bianca must try to unmask a serial killer before he strikes again.

The film stars Ignacio Diaz-Silvero (A Good Person), Ireon Roach (Candyman), Yani Gellman (Jason X), Maisie Merlock (Black Mold), Cameron Scott Roberts (The Last Shift), Ryan Foreman (How to L0ve), Lorena Diaz (Chicago Med), Cole Steeves (Shooting Stars), Thatcher Jacobs (The Seeding), Lucy Carapetyan (Fargo), Dale Rivera (Chicago P.D.), Elizabeth Stam (Bleed American), Dennis William Grimes (Chicago Fire), Jae Artell (Justified: City Primeval), Sasha Kuznetsov (Perpetrator), and newcomers Jesus Castro, Benjamin Czaplewski, Archer Geye, and Lorena Pulido.

Cooney and Nateras produced Departing Seniors with Kelly Parker and Dashawna Wright. Giles Edwards, Nicola Goelzhaeuser, and Greg Newman serve as executive producers.

What did you think of the Departing Seniors trailer? Will you be watching this movie when it reaches theatres and VOD next month? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

Slashers are my favorite kind of movies to watch and I have enjoyed the “this movie, but it’s a slasher” films mentioned at the top of this article, so I will definitely be checking this one out.

Departing Seniors
Source: Arrow in the Head

About the Author

Cody is a news editor and film critic, focused on the horror arm of JoBlo.com, and writes scripts for videos that are released through the JoBlo Originals and JoBlo Horror Originals YouTube channels. In his spare time, he's a globe-trotting digital nomad, runs a personal blog called Life Between Frames, and writes novels and screenplays.