Picture this. You’re approaching 40 and you find yourself returning to your high school after 20 years, where you will be enrolled as a student surrounded by TikTok-obsessed teens. This is–shockingly–not the premise of a horror film, but of Netflix’s upcoming Rebel Wilson-led comedy, Senior Year.
The opening title card of the film’s first trailer, released on Monday, indicates that the year is 2002. Boy bands are all the rage, bedazzled, low-rise jeans and butterfly clips are the height of fashion. Life could not get any better for Wilson’s character Stephanie Conway, a popular cheer captain played as a teen by Mare of Easttown actress Angourie Rice, when a cheerleading stunt gone wrong sends her into a coma.
Stephanie wakes up in the hospital two decades later, feeling robbed of her perfect senior year complete with a successful cheer season, a hunky boyfriend (sporting frosted tips and a seashell necklace, of course), and the coveted title of prom queen. Basically, she is having major FOMO for everything she missed during her 20-year coma.
“Everyone else has got to go on and live their lives and, what, I’m supposed to just jump forward?” she asks her dad, played by Saturday Night Live alum Chris Parnell. “I mean, I just found out there is eight more Fast & Furious movies.” Naturally, she decides to go back to high school, and hijinks ensue.
Decked out in her early-aughts finest (a hot pink, rhinestone-adorned tank top layered over a striped baby tee, for example), Stephanie quickly learns high school is a bit different now than when she ruled the halls. She simply can’t wrap her head around the inclusive, Gen Z “everyone is popular” mentality.
“Oh, no, no, no. There’s only like three ways to become popular,” she tells a lunch table full of teens. “To be a cheerleader, to work at Abercrombie, or to let guys go in the backdoor.” Upon learning that everyone on the cheer squad is a captain, she remarks, “That is the most fucked up thing I’ve ever heard.”
In a press release for the film from earlier this year, Wilson described Senior Year as an updated hybrid of two classic high school movies—Never Been Kissed and Bring It On. In other words, it is our dream movie.
Senior Year is directed by Alex Hardcastle. It features a supporting cast of hilariously funny actors, including Sam Richardson, Zoe Chao, and Mary Holland. Former teen movie queen Alicia Silverstone and 2000s heartthrob Justin Hartley also make appearances.
Revel in the Y2K nostalgia when Senior Year comes out on May 13.
