Lifetime Film Review: Killer Competition (dir by Andrew Lawrence)


I was not valedictorian of my high school.

I’ve always thought that was a bit unfair, to be honest.  I mean, I was clearly the smartest person in my graduating class but my grades didn’t always reflect that.  Now, admittedly, I went through some stuff in the 9th and the 10th grades and basically, I was like a C student for those two years but that wasn’t really my fault.  I just wasn’t trying.  All of my teachers told me that I would be their top student if I would just do my homework and maybe study for a test or two.  My grades improved during my junior year of high school.  If it was an English or a history class, I never got anything less than an A.  I got A’s in all of my electives.  It was the math and the science classes that would drag me down.  I never cared about either subject and, to be honest, I probably would have never gotten a passing grade in any of my math classes if not for the fact that my sister was a year ahead of me and she saved all of her tests.  I’m not saying that cheating was the right thing to do but …. well, I guess I am saying that.  But anyway, my point is that it was a little but unfair to make me take all of those math and science classes because those just weren’t my thing and, if not for them and if my grades from the 9th and the 10th grade hadn’t been factored into the equation, I would have had a 4.0+ and I could have given the greatest graduation speech in history.

That said, I pretty much knew that I wasn’t going to be anywhere near the top ten of my high school graduating class and I was okay with that.  I wasn’t planning on going to an Ivy League school.  To be honest, for most of high school, I wasn’t even planning on going to college.  I was going to take a leap year or two and go to Europe.  (My mom compromised and allowed me to go to Europe for the summer on the condition that I go to college in the fall.)  For the most part, I think I had a pretty good attitude about things.

Unfortunately, the characters in Killer Competition do not have a similar attitude.  Nicole (Jacqueline Scislowski) is obsessed with becoming valedictorian so that she can get into her dream college.  Complicating things is that super smart Victor (Philip McElroy) has applied to the same school and apparently, only 300 students are accepted and it’s rare that the college ever accepts two students from the same high school.  If Nicole is going to go to a good college and end up with a crippling amount of debt, she’s going to have to prevent Victor from becoming valedictorian.  But how!?  Nicole’s friend Sarah (Cristine Prosperi) suggests that Nicole break into the school and substitute Victor’s A test paper with a B test paper.  It’s always good to have a friend like Sarah!  Anyway, needless to say, that is all leads to secrets, lies, and murder.  It’s a Lifetime film.

I really liked Killer Competition.  It embraces the melodrama and, most importantly, it seems to be in on the joke.  Killer Competition doesn’t waste any time going over the top as Nicole and Sarah somehow manage to pull off one of the most absurdly complicated schemes in the history of high school.  Cristine Prosperi, who you may recognize from Degrassi, has a lot of fun with the role of Sarah, playing her as a cheerful force of chaos and destruction.  Killer Competition is a lot of fun and definitely one to watch the next time you’re wondering how far you would go to get into Harvard or Yale.