Dead on Campus

Well the German title suggests that. Though they just riffed on a 90s movie with Sarah Michelle Gellar and ... it doesn't matter, because they don't have really that much in common. This one is about a sorority and about a girl trying to fit in or get by overall.

It is a weird thriller, that I guess can be satisfying for some. But is also cliche ridden and a bit tv movie of the week material. Maybe it actually was, I didn't check. So nothing special to see over here. Save your time even if there are way worse movies to watch out there.

Natalie transfers to college. She wants to be an architect. As luck would have it, she catches her boyfriend cheating on her just before she moves, so now she is free.

But some sinister girls are monitoring her and making plans for her. They set her up with a roommate and are looking for a guy for her. Turns out these girls run one of the prominent sororities on campus.

Sure enough, Natalie with some help of her roommate decides to rush that sorority, as her now dead mother did years ago. Her hazing includes her having to seduce a guy...just the guy the sinister girls had picked for her. Natalie and the guy are actually a good match for each other and they go on two dates. While they are making out in her dorm, the roommate barges in and offers the guy some brownies, he starts hallucinating, a bunch of sorority sisters arrive to film him, he leaves, crashes his car and dies.

His sister coincidentally works on campus in some administration capacity and thinks something is fishy with his death. They find THC and ecstasy in his system, but she known that as an athlete he would never take drugs (ha!). She discovers that he's been seeing Natalie and talks to her. The entire sorority went into panic mode and the girls decided to stick to a story that they had nothing to do with anything. But the guy's sister knows better, and Natalie isn't very good at lying, something she's made clear to Alexa--the sinister leader. The guy's sister herself ends up in trouble and gets herself fired for harassing the sorority.

But Natalie keeps having seconds thoughts. She goes home and talks to her friends about it. When she returns to campus, Alex and her sidekick, plant drugs on her and call the cops. Natalie ends up arrested, but fortunately the sorority hires a lawyer and pays her bail. Now they have Natalie but she also realizes how far they are willing to go. She comes clean to the guy's sister and with her friends plan to take down Alexa. In the process we learn the motivation for Alexa's action.

Dead on Campus doesn't involve a death on campus, nor is it particularly sexy or thrilling. But I did like the main themes of the movie--the lure of power, the abuse of power, the corrupt network of the corrupt powerful who'll go to any lengths to cover up each others misdeeds. The message of the movie is good too--to do the right thing even when it's not the easy or convenient.

Execution is a bit iffy. Casting is rather poor overall, with the exception of Natalie's friend who saves the day at the end. The girls are overdressed and overmade-up most of the time.

It's somewhat embarrassing that we have to compare this movie to the many many OTHER Lifetime movie "sorority murder" movies - as if it is now a genre. But that's where we are. In this genre, it is a weaker entry. It's not murderous enough to be thrilling nor trashy enough to be a guilty pleasure.

What it is is a rather plodding murder investigation where yet another pritzy ditzy stuck up sorority president is named Alexa and ruins and/or murders people who stand in the way of her reputation.

When innocent do-gooder sorority sister Natalie, who knows too much, gets incriminated for drugs, she goes through about 6 flagrant breaches of due process in about 90 seconds.

And a plan to retrieve critical exonerating evidence relies on a series of very narrow suppositions. The final "reveal" relies on the well-worn lazy plot device to have the sorority president have what amounts to a confession broadcast to guests at a very important function.

In the end, complicit Alexa has to leave the sorority and the university, and is led away "in handcuffs". But to films credit, the writers never indicate she's charged with any crime because we all know that, as the daughter of a congressman and as the darling of all the powerful sorority alum, she's probably never going to spend a day in jail.