User Reviews

Unlike most God-awful Lifetime movies, someone shelled out a bit of money for this and managed to land an impressive location: what seems like a legitimate European castle/university for young women. (But it must have been somewhere in Canada because it's cheaper to film there.) Between the students' rooms, the cafeteria, the staff offices, the library, the stairwells, the outside gardens, some "unique" camera angles and basically wall-to-wall dramatic music, TBSM comes across as much grander than it really is.

As soon as the first (and only) murder has been committed, your mind will automatically start narrowing it down to who could have done it. Still, I was a bit surprised at the end.

The director and screenwriters obviously made choices to provide "thriller beats" to many scenes, but none of them were really that thrilling. The most exciting thing that happens in this 90-minute film is when four of the main girls get into a fistfight-hairfight-foodfight in the cafeteria. It simply wasn't long enough. If they had had 90 minutes of just that, this movie would've probably scored a ten.

Hannah Galway, as the "troubled" lead "Frankie," makes a valiant effort to carry the whole film on her shoulders. But the script imprisons her with an endless series of breaking into people's rooms, walking down hallways in an ill-fitting school uniform, constantly calling her former foster care buddy back in New York to report on the odd goings-on at the university, and offering snappy comebacks to a supposed detective who comes across as creepy, strange and cliched.

There were several lines of dialogue that were well written, almost impressive, but unfortunately, not enough to warrant watching the film. And despite attempts to heat up the suspense, I found myself bursting into gut laughs every five minutes.

So, kudos to the production company for scoring this major location and actually hiring more than their standard seven characters. That said, it didn't make that much of a difference because the story was lacking.

Francesca "Frankie" Logan experienced a hardscrabble upbringing in foster homes, and she was once arrested for shoplifting and for assaulting a security guard in a shopping mall. But her outstanding intellect and motivation have led to her acceptance at a prestigious boarding school in Switzerland.

The school is located near Lausanne in one of the most beautiful parts of the world. But the institution itself is rotten to the core with a student body composed of social snobs and a corrupt, mendacious administration. The prissy headmistress, Miss Jane Ainsworth, lets Frankie know immediately that insubordination will not be tolerated!

Frankie acquires one friend, little Jacqueline Brenet, who serves as a confidante in this cruel institute that purports to train future leaders! The murder of one of the snotty students, Miss Tinsley Wellington, leads to a nefarious Inspector Clouseau-like figure, who interrogates the students and seeks to pin the blame on Frankie.

This slow-burner is worth sitting through for an operatic climactic scene that unfolds in the office of the headmistress. No one ever cracks a book at this distinguished academy. But there is an ample supply of insubordination from both the students and the administration to place this school on a par with the current version of Harvard University.