Built entirely around the star power of its lead performers, A Very Good Girl does, indeed, provide ample opportunities for both Kathryn Bernardo and Dolly de Leon to chew the scenery with wild abandon. But even their most campily delivered one-liners are only entertaining in the moment, as the film twists itself into increasingly complicated (and still oddly sanitized) knots to keep its thrills going. It ends with an incredibly muddled view of the kinds of violence perpetrated by the wealthy and the less fortunate, as if the studio funding the movie prevented it from becoming the bolder, edgier story it seems to want to be.

New fans of de Leon, who likely first saw her in her film-stealing performance in Triangle of Sadness, should be delighted to know that this is probably the most substantial screen role she's ever received: a Filipino Miranda Priestly but with murderous intent. She's as great as expected. But her on-screen rival, played by Bernardo, is arguably even more impressive—fully playing up the hollowness of the rich people she hates, and visibly seething at having to be in this situation in the first place. Together their interactions might only occasionally make sense, but they still add jolts of energy to an otherwise tiresome plot.