"No One Really Knows Anyone!"

lavatch

This film started out with a good premise in the story of a nerd who is bullied in high school by the pretentious and mean-spirited cheerleaders. We then meet her ten years later after she is out on her own and away from her domineering and abusive mother. But then, the film takes a strange turn for both the audience and the main character, Vicky Patterson.

Vicky is working at a Big Box outlet store, and she has a deadbeat boyfriend. But at least she is away from her oppressive mom. But she makes the fateful decision to steal the identity of a co-worker at Big Box and return to high school, impersonating a character ten years her junior.

The film struggled to make it credible that in changing from Vicky Patterson to Caitlyn Sparks, she could possibly pull off such a stunt. The character motivation was especially vague. Vicky wasn't attempt to improve herself or even to get a sense of completion with earning a high school degree. We never see her study, and it was difficult to believe she would have passed any of her courses. Rather, she wanted to experience the glory of being the head cheerleader, bag a football star named Liam, and, even more improbably, she wanted to emulate her superficial mom!

As the film progressed, our early sympathetic response to Vicky's character disappeared rapidly. The cheerleaders at Glendale High welcomed her and befriended her. In return, Vicky sets up the head cheerleader, Maddy, for a broken ankle, so that she can take her place. The murders of her greasy boyfriend Darren and the real Caitlyn Sparks follow.

At one point in the film, Heather, one of the young women who is kind to Vicky/Caitlyn, begins to learn the truth about her new friend. With a sigh, Heather exclaims, "No one really knows anyone." Vicky/Caitlyn is an example of someone who really doesn't know herself.

Despite the apparent true story on which the film was based, the situation was never made plausible by the filmmakers. Vicky Patterson was living in a fantasy world, and she was shamed by her overachieving mother. She was also bullied by her high school peers. But her response to those circumstances was not to pull herself up by her bootstraps and try to excel. Rather, it was to revert to the dark side of her nature and become even worse than the people she loathed.

score /10

lavatch 8 July 2020

Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw5892188/