The element of horror in the film “Departing Seniors” is the least interesting part of the movie. There’s absolutely no suspense in this murder mystery (and there’s not a lot of mystery at all), the murders are unimaginative, and at some point, this element of the plot feels completely pointless.
What’s more remarkable in Clare Cooney’s Directorial debut is the unwanted supernatural power that the tortured teenage protagonist realizes he possesses Javier (Ignacio Diaz-Silverio), a queer, Mexican-American outcast, is made to endure bullying from the jocks at school. At some point, while he is being bullied, he falls down a flight of stairs and gets a concussion. Upon waking in the hospital, he realizes that he has the ability to see a person’s past or future through mere touch or contact with something they have touched. For a person who finds himself in the middle of a brutal killing spree a few days before graduation, that’s not exactly useful information, especially after he realizes that there is nothing he can do to stop the bloodshed.
With this storyline, screenwriter Jose Nateras is paying heavy homage to Stephen King’s “The Dead Zone,” but does it from a self-aware angle within the confines of a high school, which gives it a somewhat unique laugh.
Diaz-Silverio plays Javier wonderfully, a character that is incredulous and witty. He has a good buddy-buddy dynamic with Ireon Roach who plays Bianca. Roach’s character has so little screen time, but her presence is so engaging and her delivery so sharp that one wishes there was more depth to her character. As it stands, her entire purpose is to help Javier get in touch with his feelings and drive him around town.
William (Ryan Foreman) also plays the quietly charming new kid who Javier has the pleasure of awkwardly flirting with. Being a gay band geek in high school, William understands Sco sympathizes with Javier and connects with him on many levels, and he just always seems to show up at the most opportune moments. Other important characters in the story have little to no background, like the mean-girl valedictorian Esme (Maisie Merlock) along with the kind-hearted English teacher, Yani Gellman, and rough but attractive jocks (Cameron Scott Roberts and Sasha Kuznetsov). It’s bad enough that he has to suffer through them. The audience has to sit through the cringe of him trying to get his class to respond to him by saying, “Bueller? Bueller?” and skipping the recognition part of the joke.
Almost everyone will recognize the available stereotypes, and in true low-budget fashion the movie “ Departing Seniors” doesn’t deliver anything new to the table.
Either way, aspects like the details of the swimming pool murder that begins the movie are baffling, and other parts of the narrative are just as baffling. How can no one panic when a murder happens on the campus? Why is Javier’s father almost wholly absent from the story, including the hospital in which he learns about his powers? Why are there no letters on the jocks’ letterman jackets?
If the sound editing did not have such severe issues, there was not such a lack of sound editing, or if the pacing was more gripping, these distractions would be easier to accept. Some of the dialogue sounds like it’s coming out of a tin can, which is subpar, at best. But at least it comes to an end with the implication that the intruder killer is still out there and will most likely return to the school to finish what he started, so if there is a second opportunity it might end up going the correct way for some of the characters.
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