When it comes to rich bitch teen queens in the movies, Kimberly Joyce (Wood) doesn't break the mould so much as thoroughly shatter it.

She's the embodiment of every self-centred thought you've ever had, all magnified to a grotesque level.

Gliding through school with an air of superiority she tosses off poisonous barbs to those around her with contempt oozing from every pore.

"There're just so many stupid, annoying, worthless people on this planet" she explains in a matter-of-fact way to a new student.

A cold and calculating individual with aspirations to become an actress by whatever mean necessary proves to be a dangerous combination for those around her.

When a teacher ejects Kimberly from the lead role in a school play her manipulative streak goes into overdrive as she concocts a story that implicates her latest adversary in some extra curricular fumbling.

Convincing her two friends to go along with the charade, the scene is thus set for a media frenzy to play out in the court room and for tragi-figure Kimberly to transform herself into an overnight celebrity by the end of it.

There is much to admire in writer Skander Halim's script and his attempt to take the teen high school setting and turn it into satire and a statement on our current pre-occupation with celebrity worship and material obsession.

When Kimberly tells newly arrived Arab student, Randa, that of the list of races to which she'd like to belong, Arab would be the least favoured and gives a methodical reasoning why it is both crude, funny and offensive at the same time.

Woods follows on her fine turn in Thirteen with a thoroughly convincing performance as the teenage femme fatale with ice in her veins, oblivious to the consequences her actions will cause.

However, by populating the film with so many outlandish characters which include a power lesbian reporter, bigoted father, eccentric headmaster and shambolic lawyer it serves to prove that in this instance fiction is probably stranger than reality.

With a blend of comical and serious moments, it's entertaining in parts but the film-makers seem to be caught at a tonal halfway house. I wasn't persuaded.

Jack Tsang