Devil On Campus (2024)

Sometimes the best viewing experiences begin with a mistake.

That was certainly the case with Devil on Campus. I clicked on it while scrolling through Netflix, fully convinced I was about to watch a documentary. The story surrounding the Sarah Lawrence cult has fascinated me ever since reading a fictionalized novel inspired by the case, so I assumed I was diving into another true crime documentary exploring the events.

Instead, I found myself staring at a Lifetime movie.

For a brief moment, I debated backing out. Lifetime movies have a reputation, and let’s just say that reputation doesn’t typically involve Oscar buzz. They’re usually predictable, melodramatic, and entertaining for reasons that aren’t always intentional. My internal debate became surprisingly simple: do I switch to an actual documentary, or do I embrace the fact that I accidentally started a Lifetime movie and see where it goes?

Curiosity won.

Oddly enough, I’m glad it did.

If you’re unfamiliar with the story, Devil on Campus dramatizes the real events that unfolded at Sarah Lawrence College, where Larry Ray, the father of one student’s roommate, gradually inserted himself into the lives of a group of college students. What began as an older man temporarily staying with students slowly evolved into an increasingly disturbing web of psychological manipulation, coercive control, and abuse.

It’s one of those stories that almost sounds too bizarre to be real, which is probably why it has generated so much interest through books, documentaries, podcasts, and now dramatizations like this one.

Whenever stories like this emerge, the immediate public reaction is often some variation of, “How could anyone possibly fall for that?” It’s an understandable question, but it’s usually the wrong one. Manipulation rarely begins with obvious warning signs. It develops one small compromise at a time, until the person’s entire understanding of reality has been reshaped. Looking at the final outcome without considering the thousands of smaller moments that came before it makes these situations seem impossible to understand.

Rather than portraying the victims as naïve or unintelligent, the film spends time showing how trust is built before it’s exploited. That’s an important distinction because it shifts the conversation away from blaming people for what happened to them and toward understanding the methods used by those doing the manipulating.

The acting also deserves more credit than I expected.

Going into a Lifetime movie, I had admittedly lowered my expectations. That’s probably unfair, but the network has cultivated a very specific style over the years, and subtle character work isn’t always at the top of the list. Here, though, I found the performances considerably stronger than I anticipated. No one is likely collecting major acting awards for this film, but the cast succeeds in making the central relationships believable enough that the emotional manipulation carries real weight.

Perhaps the biggest compliment I can give the movie is that it made me want to revisit the real case.

Having already read about the events previously, I found myself mentally comparing scenes to what actually happened, and for the most part, the film captures the broad strokes remarkably well. Naturally, some details are condensed or dramatized because that’s the nature of adapting true events into a feature length movie, but I never felt like the filmmakers were recklessly inventing drama where none existed. The true story is compelling enough on its own.

That said, this is still unmistakably a Lifetime movie.

There are moments where the dialogue feels a little more dramatic than natural, certain emotional beats are delivered with less subtlety than they might have been in another production, and the overall presentation occasionally reminds you exactly what kind of movie you’re watching.

If you’ve never heard about the Sarah Lawrence cult, I would probably recommend watching one of the documentaries first. A documentary naturally has more room to explore the real people, the investigation, and the lasting consequences in greater detail. Those seeking a comprehensive understanding of the case will likely come away with more context from nonfiction than they will from a dramatization.

However, if you’ve already watched the documentaries or simply want a fictional retelling that stays reasonably faithful to the events, Devil on Campus is much better than its Lifetime label might suggest.

I genuinely didn’t expect to end up recommending a Lifetime movie this year.