Film / The Cheating Pact

L to R: Meredith, Jordan, Kylie, Heather.

The Cheating Pact is a 2013 Lifetime movie, directed by Doug Campbell, and written by Campbell, Barbara Kymlicka and Ken Sanders.

Southern California high school students Heather (Daniela Bobadilla), Kylie (Laura Ashley Samuels) and Jordan (Max Carver) are all desperate to do well on their college entrance exam. In a scheme hatched by Kylie, they decide to cheat, hiring their smart classmate Meredith (Laura Slade Wiggins), who needs money to help her disabled brother, to take their exams for them.

The cast also includes Cynthia Gibb (as Heather's mother Brenda) and Jamie Luner (as Ms. Walters, a teacher who starts to suspect that the kids cheated). The movie is partly based on a real-life scandal in Long Island, where several students were implicated in hiring other students to take their exams.

It can be viewed on Tubi.

The Cheating Pact contains examples of:

• Abusive Parents: Kylie's mother is an emotionally cold woman who pressures her to do well and constantly tells her she's not good enough.
• Accidental Murder: Kylie wasn't trying to kill Meredith, but pushed her over a railing while trying to get her phone from her.
• Adults Are Useless: When a teacher tells the principal that students are cheating, he says they should just leave it alone because Jordan's family has given donations to the school. As a result, things escalate further until Meredith ends up dead.
• Alpha Bitch: Kylie, who has bullied Meredith in the past and blackmails her into agreeing to cheat for her. Indeed, the complications in the story's third act are largely brought on by Kylie being an entitled jerk who can't even be bothered to fake being nice and civil to Meredith for more than about five seconds.
• Antagonist in Mourning: A guilt-ridden Kylie writes a note to Meredith after her death calling her the smartest person she ever met.
• Artistic License – Law: Kylie tells Meredith that she committed a felony by impersonating two people and could get three years in jail. In California, where the film takes place, this can be prosecuted as either a misdemeanor or a felony depending on the circumstances, and since Meredith had no criminal record and was doing it to get money to treat her brother, she would likely not get punished too harshly.
• Bad Liar:
  • Heather, to the point that even when she's telling the truth people suspect her of lying.
  • Kylie doesn't seem shocked at all when Heather tells her that Meredith is dead, and starts getting anxious after a while, though Heather doesn't pick up on it.
• Beauty Is Bad: Kylie, an attractive, glam blonde girl, is the film's main villain, bullying Meredith, then targeting her to help herself and her friends cheat on the exam.
• Big Sister Instinct: Meredith is protective of her younger brother, who's crippled, and agrees to help Heather and the others cheat because the money they're offering her can be used to pay his medical bills.
• Bland-Name Product: The students aren't taking the SAT, they're taking the CET (College Entrance Test). And instead of 1600 being the perfect score, it's 2400 on the CET.
• Cat Fight: Heather and Meredith get into fisticuffs at school when Heather asks Meredith to give her the fake IDs, which gives the others some ammo to finger Heather as the culprit after Meredith dies.
• Corrupt the Cutie: While shy Shrinking Violet Ingenue Meredith has noble intentions in agreeing to take the other students' tests, she sees her morals start slipping, even lying to her father about how she got the extra money, and she enjoys her brief surge in popularity when other students are lining up to hire her, rubbing it in Kylie's face that Jordan got to her first.
• Decoy Protagonist: Though her death is a Foregone Conclusion, Meredith gets fleshed out a lot and the film focuses on her motivations and guilt over what she's doing, until she ends up dead.
• Developing Doomed Characters: The start of the film tells us that Meredith will end up dead, but she gets a lot of focus for the first hour as if she was the main character, which makes her death hit harder.
• Disappointed in You: When Scott catches Meredith taking the exam for Jordan, he chides her for doing so while making mention of how he looked up to her.
• Establishing Character Moment: Kylie's vile Alpha Bitch nature is revealed in her very first scene, when she steals Meredith's phone, looks through her pictures, mocks a boy who she assumes is Meredith's boyfriend, then shows no remorse or shame after Meredith tells her that it's actually her disabled brother.
• Everyone Has Standards: Jordan is willing to cheat and beats up Scott to keep him quiet, but he never wanted Meredith dead and tells Kylie she has to turn herself in when he realizes she did it.
• Gender-Blender Name: Invoked Trope, as Jordan notes that, since his first name can be used for boys and girls, Meredith can still take his test as "Jordan" without arousing suspicion, and he can make a fake ID for her.
• Good Parents: In contrast to Kylie, Heather and Meredith both have supportive parents, and Heather's mother stands by her despite learning what she's done wrong.
• Guilt-Ridden Accomplice: Heather, who wants to get into a good school, but is troubled by the more ruthless methods Kylie will go to.
• Hope Spot: Heather decides she wants out of the cheating scam and she and Meredith are able to patch things up and make plans to have fun later. Then Kylie arrives at Meredith's house and kills her in a fight.
• How We Got Here: The start shows Heather being arrested for Meredith's death, before we jump back in time.
• I Never Said It Was Poison: Kylie tells Jordan that Meredith died from falling over her staircase railing, which only someone who was at the scene would know.
• Informed Ability: The principal claims Heather is one of their best students, despite her getting a mediocre score on her exam, which is what sets off the entire plot. According to Kylie, Heather is also an incredible short story writer, which we never see any evidence for either.
• It's All My Fault: After she finds out about the cheating scheme, Heather's mother blames herself for her daughter's involvement, feeling she put too much pressure on Heather.
• Ivy League for Everyone: Zig-zagged a little, since it's mentioned that Kylie's older sister went to Yale, and Meredith's sort-of boyfriend Christopher mentions wanting to go to Ivy-like Stanford, but Whittendale, the fictional elite college mentioned in many Lifetime movies, is where Heather wants to go, and Meredith herself mentions the much less prestigious Cal State Northridge as a possibility, so she can stay close to home and help her brother.
• Kick the Dog: Jordan beating up Scott and threatening to kill him if he talks.
• Laser-Guided Karma: Kylie blackmails Meredith into taking the test for her by threatening to report her to the police for helping Heather. Meredith takes the test as she was told, and deliberately gets an even lower score than Kylie originally got.
• Let Us Never Speak of This Again: Used almost word-for-word by Kylie's mom after they come up with a false alibi for Kylie's whereabouts when Meredith died.
• Minor with Fake I.D.: Variant, since, rather than a driver's license, much of the scheme centers on Jordan making fake student ID cards for him and the others with Meredith's picture on them.
• My God, What Have I Done?: Kylie after realizing she's killed Meredith. She makes a brief effort to revive her and then flees in a panic, but is clearly upset afterward and finally comes clean to save Heather from going to jail.
• Oblivious Guilt Slinging: There's quite a bit of it between Heather and her mom when she gushes about her improved test score, who's unaware that she had Meredith take the test for her.
• Parental Favoritism: Kylie's mother makes little secret of how she holds Kathleen (Kylie's older sister) in higher regard than Kylie due to her being more academically gifted.
• She Cleans Up Nicely: Meredith is typically mousy-looking, with curly hair and Nerd Glasses, but after Heather invites her to the Wild Teen Party, she gets a makeover, ditches the glasses and straightens her hair and becomes quite striking.
• Toxic Friend Influence: Kylie is able to pressure Heather into going along with her schemes for most of the movie.
• Very Loosely Based on a True Story: As mentioned above, the film (labeled "inspired by true events" in the opening credits) is based in part on a scandal that erupted in 2011 on Long Island, which began when it was discovered that a student had been paid to take SAT exams for several classmates. No one was killed in Real Life, however.
• We Used to Be Friends: Meredith and Heather have been close since second grade, until Kylie enrolled at the school and Heather stopped speaking to Meredith.
• Wrongly Accused: Heather is suspected of killing Meredith, as she was the one who found her body and had gotten in a fight with her earlier at school.