L-R: Lisa, Monica, Cassie, Sheri, Bianca
Sorority Secrets is a 2020 Lifetime Movie of the Week Thriller directed by Damián Romay and written by Kelly Peters and Amy Katherine Taylor.
Cassie Thompson (Brytnee Ratledge) loses her scholarship at an elite college before her sophomore year because of budget cuts. When her mother Debra (Elisabetta Fantone) refuses to let her drop out, Cassie finds what seems to be a great backup plan: join the Kappa Eta Lambda sorority, which pays for its members' tuition and housing. She gets mentored by sorority president Monica (Tommi Rose), quickly becomes a favorite of demanding house mother Wendy (Marie Debrey), and is invited to join the elite Socnote Committee, who go on lavish trips and wear expensive clothes given to them for free. But as Lambda mourns the death of a former member, Cassie meets Simon (Duncan Bahr) for a supposed "job interview" and learns the awful truth about the sorority: its members are being pimped out to wealthy male alums. Determined to expose Wendy and her ghastly scheme, with the help of Nice Guy friend Charlie (Nikolai Soroko), Cassie realizes her life may be in danger as more Lambda sisters suffer horrible fates.
Sorority Secrets contains examples of:
- Absurdly Youthful Mother: Debra might be Older Than She Looks, but she still looks young enough to get mistaken for Cassie's sister by Wendy. The film drops implications that this is a result of Debra having been a teenage mother.note
- Alpha Bitch: Monica definitely counts at first, as the snooty sorority president who turns down Cassie (complete with Bianca as her Beta Bitch), but she eventually starts getting along better with Cassie, but we also learn there's a much darker side to her story.
- Bitch in Sheep's Clothing: Wendy tries to come across as a supportive authority figure to the sisters, but she's really pushy toward them, steers them into situations they're not comfortable with, before we finally learn that she's complicit in prostituting them out.
- Broken Bird: Monica, from a broken home and a modest background, thrives on the attention she gets from her sugar daddy, and is determined to maintain her status no matter what, even agreeing to his plan to leave his wife for her. But when he breaks up with Monica to pursue Cassie, she's completely shattered.
- Candlelit Bath: Cassie takes one to calm down, but Monica breaks in and tries to drown her.
- Chekhov's Gun: Wendy's comment that Debra looks and sounds like Cassie foreshadows the climax, where Debra poses as Cassie.
- Cool Shades: Monica and Bianca wear them at Kerrie's memorial service.
- Corrupt the Cutie:
- Cassie arrives at Lambda as a bright-eyed Ingenue only there to live while she studies, but as she gets involved with the Soc Committee and mingles with alums, she becomes more wrapped up in the sorority's life, though she stops once some horrible lines are crossed.
- It's implied that the exact same thing happened with Monica, turning her into a cold Alpha Bitch.
- Date Rape Averted: Simon, calling himself "a very passionate man", strokes Cassie's hair and lowers a shoulder strap on her dress when they have dinner, only to be interrupted by a phone call.
- Dude, She's Like in a Coma: Cassie gets moved into a special room at the house that Monica formerly occupied. One night as she's asleep, Simon, who it turns out has a key to the room, shows up for what he obviously thinks will be non-consensual sex with Cassie, but she wakes up and scares him off.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: Cassie has had to endure sexual assault and attempted murder to get there, but as the movie ends she forms a group called Sororities Against Sexploitation, her best friend Lisa and love interest Charlie have survived, her mom Debra is now the sorority house mother, and the movie closes with the revelation that Cassie and Charlie are now an Official Couple.
- High-Class Call Girl: What Wendy is positioning the Lambda girls to be, with ultra-glam Monica fitting the stereotype well.
- How We Got Here: The movie opens with Charlie getting stabbed at the Masquerade Ball, then it jumps back to tell the story of how Cassie joined Lambda.
- Impairment Shot: When Cassie gets slipped a roofie at the White Party.
- In the Hood: The person who kills Kerrie and Sheri and tries to kill Cassie is wearing a black hoodie. It's Monica.
- Interrupted Declaration of Love: During the party climax, Charlie and Cassie confess their love for one another, only for Charlie to get stabbed by Monica.
- Leg Focus: The Lambda sisters wear lots of leg-baring dresses, especially Monica, with Cassie wearing a dress with a very short skirt in her dinner scene with Simon.
- Masquerade Ball: As a plot to expose Wendy, Cassie, with help from Debra and Charlie, plans a masked ball for the sorority, with Cassie and Debra wearing the same outfit, which makes them look alike with masks on, allowing for Debra to pose as Cassie at a key moment.
- Meal Ticket: The Lambda sisters all get paired with "Angels" who provide them with money and help. It turns out they're all well-off male alums.
- Murder by Mistake: Sheri was wearing Cassie's hoodie when she was killed, and at the climax Monica confesses that she killed her thinking she was Cassie.
- Naïve Everygirl: Cassie just assumes she joined a really generous sorority at first, and Wendy does lots of Gaslighting to encourage these beliefs.
- Newhart Phonecall: A Played for Drama case, when we see and hear Monica's tearful, desperate side of a phone call. It turns out to have been Simon, dumping her.Monica: You can't do this to me! No-no-no, please! I can do better, I promise!...YOU PROMISED ME!
- Nice Guy: While there's some initial Belligerent Sexual Tension when Cassie accuses him of drugging her, Charlie, the fellow student who she first meets as the bartender at the White Party, is playful, friendly, concerned and reassuring toward her at the appropriate moments, even letting her stay at his house when things get dangerous at the sorority, and calling her mother to help them out.
- Ping Pong Naïveté: Lisa at first seems like she's not aware of the sorority's sexploitation issues, but she later confesses that she rebuffed the advances of a potential sugar daddy.
- Recovered Addict: Lisa joined Lambda after leaving rehab, but lied on her application about it. Wendy and Monica still know about it.
- Recycled Premise: Lifetime's The Cheerleader Escort, which debuted about a year earlier, is also about a Naïve Everygirl named Cassie who joins an elite women's group at a college that she learns is really a secret escort service for rich alumni, with one of the other sugar babies named Monica. The main difference is that Cassie ends up falling for her (much more charming) sugar daddy. Another big difference is that in The Cheerleader Escort, it's established upfront that the cheerleaders are being prostituted, while here it's not fully established with Lambda until Cassie's dinner with Simon.
- Red Herring: Once Cassie realizes what's going on, she concludes Wendy is behind the murders and murder attempts, but in her Motive Rant, Monica says that only the initial murder of Kerrie was ordered by Wendy. Everything else was Monica acting on her own.
- Roaring Rampage of Revenge: At the end we learn that the murders and attempted murders of Lambda sisters were done by Monica, angry that Simon broke up with her and blaming Cassie for it.
- Sacrificial Lamb: Kerrie and Sheri don't have a role in the story other than being murdered by the killer in the black hoodie.
- Secret Test of Character: Prospective Lambda members get rejected at first, so they can prove that they're serious about joining by asking again.
- Sexual Extortion: Basically what keeps the escort scheme going, as Wendy apparently has dirt on all the sisters that she's willing to use for blackmail. Specifically she threatens to expose Lisa's past drug problems if she doesn't go along.
- Shopping Montage: Monica and Bianca take Cassie shopping for cocktail dresses after she joins the Soc Committee.
- Sinister Sorority Sisters: The Kappa Eta Lambda house is a staging ground for sexual exploitation and murder.
- Slipping a Mickey:
- Cassie gets roofied at the White Party. She initially suspects Charlie the bartender, but it's revealed to have been Wendy and Simon working together.
- Lisa goes into a coma after someone drugs her.
- Smug Snake: Wendy always acts like she knows what's best for Cassie and brushes off her concerns, then denies any wrongdoing when she's caught.
- Stripperiffic: Wendy goads Cassie into wearing a clingy, lowcut black cocktail dress to what Cassie believes is a job interview with Simon.
- Trailers Always Spoil: Lifetime's promos for the movie inexplicably reveal Monica as the Hidden Villain by featuring the part of the climax where she tries to stab Cassie to death.
- Unwitting Instigator of Doom: Lisa, Cassie's ex-classmate, encourages her to pledge for Lambda, setting off a chain of events that leads to two murders, an attempted bathtub drowning, and Lisa herself going into a coma.
