(2017)

Submitted by Amy W

Estranged friends Amanda (Olivia Cooke) and Lily (Anya Taylor-Joy) reconnect after the bloody death of Amanda’s prize thoroughbred, Honeymooner. Lily starts tutoring Amanda for the SAT, but it’s clear that both of them have more on their minds. In Lily’s case, it’s her fitness-obsessed stepfather, Mark (Paul Sparks), whom she clearly hates and vice versa. Soon the two wealthy “thoroughbred” girls plot to murder him.

They try to pay drug dealer and registered-sex-offender Tim (Anton Yelchin) to do the deed, but he chickens out. Inwardly, Lily is glad of this. She invites Amanda over to watch “A Little Princess” with her, puts Rohypnol in her screwdriver, and aims to put the knife in Amanda’s hand after she kills Mark. At the last minute, she warns Amanda, who drinks the cocktail anyway because, as she says, she lives a meaningless life. Lily then goes through with her plan, but it’s unclear whether her crying afterward is fake or not.

The film ends with Tim moving up in the world from nursing-home dishwasher to parking valet, Lily going to “college” (actually the mental-hospital-cum boarding school Mark paid to send her to), and Amanda ending up in a psychiatric institution. At night, Amanda dreams of horses, and it’s apropos. Just as Honeymooner ended up a sacrifice to her rich family, Amanda ended up a sacrifice to Lily and her botched ambitions.