SUPER HUMAN follows Whitney who has spent her whole life hiding her superhuman strength; but, after one explosive night, Whitney is expelled and must leave her high school for a boarding school far, far away. There, she discovers she’s not alone in this power – and not everyone is using it for good.
SUPER HUMAN meets Whitney earlier in her life, seeing all of the steps she must take to hide her superhuman strength from the world. She has a strict routine between her everyday life of going to school and her personal life with friends and family. If nothing changes and nothing triggers her anxiety, then life is fine. Famous last words for a teenager, am I right? After one intense trigger at a school dance, she must leave her current life or fear being outed.
With limited options, her mom chooses to send her to an all-girls boarding school in Upstate New York. There, they have such strict rules that her mom feels Whitney can really thrive. More structure, less surprises. That’s what she needs.
Broken, Whitney packs up to leave her world behind. Her one best friend – who knows the truth about Whitney and her powers – assures her she’ll return soon. This isn’t goodbye forever.
Now at Woodward High, Whitney keeps to herself. She doesn’t want to risk another outburst, so she doesn’t draw attention to herself. She goes to class, and she goes back to her room. That’s it.
This behavior draws the attention of Ms. Sweetly, who soon reveals to Whitney that she, too, has superpowers, and there are others like her.
Over a school break, Ms. Sweetly brings Whitney to a retreat for those like her – other kids who have these other-worldly skills. As they are all learning to understand their powers and control their triggers, Whitney learns more about this new world. There are so many others like her all over the world – some who just want to fit in like her, and some who want to use their skills to gain power over others.
Soon, Whitney is thriving on these retreats. It’s like sleep away camp but for people with powers. Until she meets newcomer Bethany who has the power to control minds and has been using that power to hurt people. Ms. Sweetly feels it’s time to explain to the students the difference between being a powerful person and being a superhero. She uses Whitney as an example of someone who has superhero potential, which makes Bethany’s blood boil.
Bethany plots to show that Whitney can be evil, too, and decides Whitney’s high school graduation is the perfect place to launch her plan.
At their graduation, Bethany attacks Ms. Sweetly forcing Whitney to protect her. In a pivotal moment, Whitney must decide if she has it in her to truly hurt Bethany in order to stop her – thus proving to all that good can become evil. But she can’t. Whitney can’t do it, and Bethany gets away.
This attack from Bethany has weakened Ms. Sweetly’s powers, so she asks Whitney to take over the gifted school after graduation, until they can find a way to regain Ms. Sweetly’s powers – all while focusing on this new threat – Bethany and her crew.
Ashley Maria is an Emmy Nominated director & writer based in Los Angeles, CA. She is best known for her comedy/horror short “Friday Night Fright” which won a Directors Guild of America award and her breakthrough documentary “Pioneers in Skirts,” airing now on PBS, which follows her own journey to find solutions to overcoming systemic bias in our culture. Ashley is also a Blackmagic Collective fellow in their Filmmaker Advancement Initiative and just wrapped production on her next impact film “Super Human Anxiety,” which will launch in May 2024 for Mental Health Awareness Month. When not on set, Ashley is also a directing instructor at UCLA’s Film School and a sound instructor at the American Film Institute’s Young Women in Film program. An advocate for advancing women’s opportunities on set and off, Ashley takes her commitment to the next level by being a North American delegate to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women – the principal global policy-making body dedicated exclusively to gender equality and the advancement of women. Since finding this passion for advocacy, Ashley now tells her stories through a sharper lens of equality, even creating a female serial killer in her new horror feature currently in development. Ashley has also grown as a leader through this advocacy work, taking note of the dreadful numbers of diverse representation in the film industry both in front of the camera and behind.
