“When Katelyn Ogden blew up in third period pre-calc, the janitor probably figured he’d only have to scrub guts off one whiteboard this year. Makes sense. In the past, kids didn’t randomly explode….Ah, the good old days.”
So begins Aaron Starmer’s 2016 YA novel, Spontaneous—which Kirkus’ reviewer called “a blood-soaked, laugh-filled, tear-drenched, endlessly compelling read.” Now, a gory movie version is headed to video-on-demand on Oct. 6. Paramount Pictures released a promising new trailer for the film, which stars Katherine Langford and Charlie Plummer.
In the Kirkus-starred horror comedy, a series of random high school seniors in a small New Jersey suburb explode like balloons for no clear reason—and no one knows who could be next to pop. As one of the students, snarky narrator Mara Carlyle, adjusts to the new not-normal, she pursues a relationship with the mysterious Dylan, who drives an ice-cream truck.
Langford recently starred in the Netflix miniseries Cursed, based on the illustrated fantasy novel by Thomas Wheeler and Frank Miller, and was a central character on the Netflix show 13 Reasons Why, based on Jay Asher’s 2007 YA bestseller. She also appeared in the popular film Love, Simon, based on Becky Albertalli’s 2015 YA novel, Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda, as well as last year’s breakout comedy-mystery movie, Knives Out.
Charlie Plummer co-starred in the Hulu miniseries of John Green’s 2005 YA novel, Looking for Alaska, and Spontaneous writer/director Brian Duffield co-wrote the 2015 film adaptation of Veronica Roth’s 2012 YA dystopian sequel, Insurgent.
David Rapp is the senior Indie editor.
