New Best Friend (2002)

It's January, the start of a new semester at exclusive Colby University nestled in the Carolina countryside. Near the campus, four young women prepare themselves for the final semester of their senior year. In her dingy apartment over the "He's Not Here Tavern," where she lives with her mother, ALICIA GLAZER (Mia Kirshner) organizes her school supplies. She is plain as well as poor. On the other side of town, in an exclusive row house, three beautiful and privileged young coeds start their day: sensuous HADLEY WESTON (Meredith Monroe), luxuriates in a bubble bath with a margarita in hand; her junk-food loving bulemic roommate JULIANNE McINTYRE (Rachel True) wolfs down a huge bowl of cereal and immediately runs into the bathroom to throw it up; and oversexed SYDNEY CONNORS (Dominique Swain) slowly wakes up next to her boyfriend, JOSH (Oliver Hudson), and some poor townie who is shocked to discover how she spent the night. Classes begin and Alicia is paired with Hadley to work on the all-important sociology class senior thesis project titled, "Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way." At first rejected, Alicia is finally accepted into Hadley's clique where she is introduced to a world of privilege and dangerous thrills. But her attempts to become one of them ultimately land her in the hospital. As the local sheriff, ARTIE BONNER (Taye Diggs), tries to determine the chain of events that led to Alicia's collapse, his investigation casts a shadow of responsibility over the untouchable, affluent young women.