CAST: Matthew Lilland, Michael Vartan, Randall Batinkoff, Keri Russell, Tamara Craig Thomas, Anthony Griffith, Bo Dietl, Dana Delany
SCR: Dan Rosen
DIR: Dan Rosen
STUDIO: Two Left Shoes Films

Call it a myth or an urban legend circulating among the halls-of-ivy set, but there's this belief in some collegic quarters that if your campus roommate commits suicide, the dean will instantly give you an automatic 4.0 grade average for the semester.

How writer-director Rosen uses this unusual bit of university malarkey makes for more of a psychological study of twisted, abnormal students than a blood-and-guts horror film, but then sometimes an exploration of the dark side of the psyche makes for a more compelling kind of "horror" experience than the obvious cliched stuff.

There's nothing great about this movie, it's just refreshing. It was shot on the cheap in and around Baltimore, Md, and has almost zero production values, and there's nothing very flashy about Rosen as a movie maker. But the acting is unusually good and the surprise twists keep coming so nobody is quite what they seem.

Heading the cast is Lillard as the chief student of deception and deceit, with Vartan as his confederate in crime, and the script's one male character you can sympathize with. Batinkoff is the campus jerk you want to hate and Russell and Thomas are the women caught up in the duplicity. Unusually rough and politically incorrect cops are played by Griffith and Dietl; Delany has a subdued role as the campus psychiatrist who calmly listens to the students' ranting and raving. Recommended if you're looking for something offbeat.

--reviewed by JOHN STANLEY

Evaluation: B . . . oops, make that a 4.0. My editor just committed suicide after reading this review.