This is the debut of writer/director Cory Finley, a playwright by trade, who has turned in one of the year’s best. A gripping psychological thriller, it focuses on childhood friends Lily and Amanda who reconnect in suburban Connecticut after years of growing apart. Lily has enjoyed the best education can offer at a storied boarding school and a coveted internship. By contrast, Amanda has become a social outcast. The two find their friendship rekindled by a mutual loathing for Lily’s stepdad; they take it to a natural extreme by employing the local drug dealer to kill him. Pitched somewhere between Patricia Highsmith and Bret Easton Ellis, it is perhaps best described as Hitchcock’s Heathers. Dark, funny, well-played and we look forward to more from Finley in the future.

Michael Bonner