'Death of a Cheerleader' also known as 'A Friend to Die For' is an excellent film and one of the most thought-provoking I have seen for a long time. The plot is informed by the real-life murder of popular cheerleader Kirsten Costas by the less popular Bernadette Protti back in the 1980s.
Kelly Martin plays Angela, an intelligent and friendly girl with close friends and a loving family. When Angela and her friend Jamie leave their old school to attend the prestigious Santa Mira High School, she is drawn in by the school's heavy emphasis on competition and "being the best". Things start off well for Angela when she is accepted into an exclusive service club called 'The Larks' and given a job in the school office. However, Angela has her sights on befriending fellow office colleague and Lark Stacey Lockwood (played by Tori Spelling). Jamie for undisclosed reasons has befriended Stacey and is part of her cliché. Whilst popular with both students and faculty Stacey is self-centred, arrogant and cruel and is not interested in being friends with Angela and is openly hostile and unkind to her. Alongside Stacey's rejection Angela experiences a string of bad luck when she is not selected for a post on the school yearbook despite being a talented writer and fails cheerleading try-outs (which Stacey passes with flying colours). Devastated and desperate Angela makes one final attempt to get Stacey to be her friend. Yet again she is rebuffed and an angry and disgusted Stacey declares she will tell the whole school how weird Angela is. In a fit of rage, Angela stabs her multiple times and leaves her to die.
To me, this is a very thought-provoking film. As fellow reviewers have also acknowledged, how failure within a competitive environment such as a high school can drive a well adjusted and kind-hearted girl to take another life is simply mind blowing to say the least.