Sexting in Suburbia
Tags: flashback

Plot synopsis:
The film opens as school pariah, Dina Van Cleve (Jenn Proske) walks down the hallway of her school. When she opens her locker, a pile of condoms that were put inside as a prank comes falling out. Later, Dina is shown alone in her bedroom recording a video diary. When her mother, Rachel (Liz Vassey) returns home, she finds Dina has hung herself.
The film then flashes back six weeks, showing Dina as a popular and talented field hockey player who was voted Homecoming Queen at her school. However, the night ends on a bad note when she changes her mind about giving her virginity to her boyfriend, Mark (Ryan Kelley), who leaves angry. Dina returns home while Mark goes to an after party and cheats on Dina with her rival, Skylar Reid (Kelli Goss). Dina takes a few pictures of herself naked and sends them to Mark the next morning. But when she arrives at school, she is surprised by applause from the student body and soon realizes that her pictures has been seen around campus. Distraught by a wall of cruel comments written about her in the girls' bathroom already, Dina demands that Mark tell her who he sent them too, but he swears he didn't do it.
Back in the present, Rachel is in Dina's room when someone calls Dina's phone. It turns out to be one of her friends, who was studying abroad. She tells Rachel that the only way she'll find anything about Dina is to look online. Rachel discovers Dina's video diary and tries to question Claire, who won't tell her anything. After going to the school administration to question the social networking profiles that were cyber bullying Dina, Rachel writes an article damning the school administration when they refuse to help her and seem more interested in covering up the entire incident. The article catches the attention of many news networks and causes the administration to endure severe backlash, but it also damages Rachel's cause. No one at Dina's school will talk to her and she loses some of her real estate work because no one will buy a house from her.
Rachel becomes the target of a revenge campaign. Someone stuffs her mailbox full of letters that say "Leave It Alone" with cut-out letters and a picture of a noose. Dina's grave is vandalized with someone spray painting "Dina is a slut" and leaving her torn letter and condoms. After breaking down and begging Mark to tell her what happened, which he doesn't do, Rachel heads home. Upon her return, someone throws a brick through the front window, breaking the glass.
Mark is arrested for distributing child pornography. One of the school administrators visits Rachel's home and tells her the news, but Rachel remains unapologetic due to the school keeping Dina's bullying hidden instead of stopping it.
Driving, Rachel spots Dina's best friend, Claire Stevens (Rachel Delante) and asks her what she knows. Claire reveals that she saw Skylar and Mark hooking up at the after party and witnessed Dina begging Mark to help her stop the circulation of the pictures. However, Skylar walked up and insulted her, causing Dina to leave. Skylar then revealed she sent the pictures from Mark's phone to one other person to prove Dina wasn't the saint she acted like.
Mark comes by to visit Rachel and as the two talk, Mark once again says that he wasn't the one who sent the pictures around. Due to what she heard from Claire, Rachel believes him and learns from him Dina started skipping field hockey after the bullying got worse. Rachel thanks Mark for his help and goes to visit her long-time friend and Skylar's mom, Patricia (Judith Hoag).
In a flashback, Claire asks Skylar to lay off Dina. However, Skylar says that someone should report Dina to the coach so she will get kicked off the team. She later manipulates Claire into doing it since she can't because she lost the position of team captain to Dina and it would look like "sour grapes".
At the Reid house, Rachel tells Patricia that she knows Skylar was the one who sent the pictures out. Despite their daughters' rivalry, Patricia refuses to believe Skylar would do something so terrible. Patricia then asks her daughter in front of Rachel if she sent the pictures and Skylar says no. Rachel asks to see Skylar's phone, but Patricia refuses. − After Rachel breaks down, Patricia offers to make her some tea while she fixes herself up in the bathroom. While inside, Rachel knocks over a pile of magazines and sees the original cut-out words from the letters in her mailbox. After Rachel leaves without revealing what she has found, Skylar tells her mom that she did send the pictures out, but to only one person. Rachel decides to drop the charges against Mark, but wants to change the direction of the investigation to focus on Skylar. However, the police reveal that Claire was the one Skylar sent the pictures too and she proceeded to send it to forty other people.
Rachel goes home and hears one of Dina's video diaries playing. In Dina's room, she finds Claire, who runs away. Rachel watches the video where Dina reveals that she got kicked off the field hockey team because of the pictures and lost her scholarship (which Skylar then gained) because her coach was forced to report it to her college of choice. It turns out this video diary was the last one Dina made before she committed suicide.
In the flashback, Dina is clearing out her locker when Skylar begins gloating. The two get into a nasty fight until Skylar reveals that Claire was the one who told the coach. Feeling completely betrayed, Dina viciously turns on Claire just as she walks in. Clearly upset by the entire situation, Claire says that she just didn't want the whole team to be disqualified if Dina's pictures were discovered.
Pleading her innocence, Claire insists that she didn't send the pictures, but intended to destroy them. However, she forgot her phone in the limo on Homecoming and it ended up back at Skylar's house. Slowly, Rachel realizes that Patricia sent the pictures from Claire's phone just as a furious Skylar confronts her mother after discovering the copies on Patricia's phone. She also realizes that it was her mother who trashed Dina's gravesite and threw the brick through Rachel's window. Patricia pleads with Skylar to understand that she did everything for her because she never would've gotten the field hockey scholarship to Price otherwise.
Disgusted by her mother's actions as well as her lack of remorse and refusal to take any responsibility for driving Dina to suicide, Skylar takes the family car and runs away, but crashes into a tree shortly after while angrily texting Patricia "I will never forgive you" after her mother sent her a message begging forgiveness. Patricia is later arrested for the distribution of child pornography.
Rachel visits Skylar in the hospital, where it is revealed that she may be paralyzed from the waist down permanently. Patricia asks if Rachel came to gloat, but Rachel apologizes that Patricia is going through what she went through, that she found Skylar as much a threat to her own daughter's success and their friendship was never real. She promises to pray for Skylar's recovery, but vows to see Patricia in court and ensure that she is punished for what she did to Dina. Rachel then leaves as Patricia breaks down in tears.
Rachel is shown recording a video diary of her own, wondering if her quest to understand what Dina went through has made any difference. Claire visits her house and asks Rachel to come with her to the school because she has a surprise. Rachel enters the packed auditorium where Claire gives a passionate speech about bullying and the deadly consequences of it. She goes on to say that Dina was bullied to death and that her suicide was the fault of everyone who not only participated in the bullying itself, but those who allowed it to continue instead of stopping it (including herself). Starting with her and Mark, the other students then give up their cell phones for the rest of the semester and vow to prevent further bullying at the school. The movie ends with Rachel watching one of Dina's earlier video diaries with Claire.

Review: 1) Don't take selfies and 2) If you do, don't post on the internet.
I watched the beginning of this movie this morning on LMN and read where it was about bullying.
Then I saw the girl take a selfie of herself to send to her boyfriend.
Not sure but why do I think that any girl who does this deserves whatever happens.
I am so glad and grateful that cell phones weren't around when my two children were in high school, but I'm also convinced that neither of my children would send incriminating selfies over the internet.
I like "instant" digital cameras.
I remember the Samsung I bought several years ago that I bought to take pictures during my annual fishing trip to the Adirondacks.
I remember reading a review that said you could take pictures of yourself and the reviewer said that might be useful at times.
I thought why in the world would that be useful.
I guess he was more aware than me of how the current youth in the U.S. are totally spoiled and into themselves..
Ending of movie ruined the whole movie.
The movie kept my interest and had it not been for the last 5 minutes, I'd have rated it above a five.When a movie deals with a "realistic" topic it should try with its best effort to portray what most likely would have happened in the real world.A girl sends her boyfriend a nude photo which ends up going viral.
Girl is kicked off her sports team and to her life has no meaning.
This is very much like what it feels like in high school when something goes awfully wrong.Girl kills herself and mom is determined to find out why.
The movie did a good job following her investigation and the culprit did take me by surprise.
The movie should have ended with the hospital scene.What the movie did next was incredibly silly.
The school suddenly rallies behind dead girl and students, on the lead of dead girl's ex-boyfriend and good friend, turn their cell phones in for the rest of the school year.Are you kidding me?
What teenager would really do this?
I couldn't believe that the makers of this movie decided to go with this ending.
Poor judgement in my mind and it made me rank this under a five..
Interesting Detective Story; Message Delivery Not So Proper.
While the movie is negatively affected by somewhat odd and untimely  flashbacks, the entire structure of storytelling does seem intact and  the story turns out to be an interestingly engaging detective-kind of  plot.
Here's the deal.
A teenage girl hangs herself to death and her mother  begins unraveling the reason behind her death.
It is the same old  never-giving-up attitude, despite the fact that it seems reasonable and  somewhat believable in the realistic sense.
So like any typical  detective movies, the investigator is determined to find the truth,  only this time the one carrying out the investigation is a mother of a  deceased child who she believes is bullied to death.
As a ordinary  detective story goes, more clues are found as the big picture starts to  surface.
The story is not bad, but definitely we do not get to see very good  editing and organization.
The ending perhaps is the part leading to a  lot of discussion and questioning.
Is this part necessary, or is it too  cliché for the viewers' taste?
Both are possibilities depending on who  you are and what you are expecting.
What we get overall is a good detective story that is extremely  personal.
The most disappointing thing has to be the ending, which  seems like a weird and constructed for one and one purpose only, for  the message delivery.
While I am not judging whether such a way of  reinforcing a message is the proper way, it would certainly be much  more favorable to spread the message throughout the entire movie,  instead of making a scene for achieving that effect, which does not  seem like a very smart choice.
A Picture is Worth Much Destruction-****.
Outstanding film dealing with bullying in our schools.
In this one, a mother of a daughter who committed suicide wants answers to what drove her daughter to do this.
The girl had everything.It is during the investigation that the mother encounters a hostile environment.
None of the students would speak to her and she gets resistance along the way from the principal of the school.
After going into the girls' bathroom, the mother had every right to accuse the principal of being incompetent.What makes this movie so good is the ending.One will be absolutely shocked to see who the culprit was.
A picture of the girl in the raw was sent all over.
This picture ruined her life.This is an engrossing, timely movie.
There is tragedy throughout the film..
hits home about how bullying can spiral out of control.
Having just watched this film now, under the title of 'Shattered Silence' which is a better title than the main, I find the film itself compelling and there is a strong underlying story to the overall plot.The cover up and denial are rife when it comes to bullying, the film has good pace and follows through dramatically with flashbacks that are well timed.What did let the film down was the very end sequence, where the children make a decision to hand in their phones as a show of respect and strength against bullying, I find this very weak, it would have been simpler to have a memorial tree planted in the victims name, something that would stand the test of time as a remembrance to the incident contained in the film.These are unfortunate circumstances that as a parent, I find I can relate to, as a film maker, we have a feature documentary titled 'Zero Tolerance' in development now that covers victims committing suicide due to bullying, it is sad when this happens, but you have to ask if this film was inspired by events over the last few years when so many more stories come out about cyber bullying..
Bad, bad, bad movie.
Where do I begin with how bad this movie is.
The writing is sophomoric, the acting wooden and the plot, while plausible, is badly developed.Why do they insist on hiring 25 year old actors to play high school kids.
If they are going to hire 25 year old actors to play high school kids can't they at least find ones who can act?
As to the writing....
they say write what you know.
While the writer may know that high school kids can be mean, he has no idea how they act, what they do and no idea about sports, prosecutors, police and the issues around sexting.Just a bad movie...
take the two hours and do something else in life..
This is a wake up call to all the USA's middle class parents, and their kids..
Don't read this review if you don't want to know the ending of this film.The pressure to want their kids to succeed among the USA's middle class parents has to be of primary importance in the competitive world of the free market.This film fires this home on both barrels.
I felt like punching my TV screen from beginning to end when watching this film.The mother responsible for this girls suicide did not see anything wrong with what she did, "I did it for you", she tells her daughter.I ask, just how many middle class American parents would be prepared to go to these lengths to help their son and/or daughter to succeed ?This mother made me angry, her daughter and her daughters friends made me angry.But the mum comes out on top because she did not seem to care what she had done, until she was found out.Oh, if only we could see the consequences of our actions 24/7.