Dead Silence on AllMovie

During her valedictorian address at her high school graduation, Renata Devereaux (Shanee Edwards) makes a startling confession: She's killed a fellow student. In flashbacks, she tells the story of how she came to accidentally drown a student (Charles Newmark) who taunted her. After that drowning, Renata, who can't keep out of trouble, helps her friend Jodi (Cherilyn Hayres) get an abortion, but the citizens of her small town, seeing Renata on television during an abortion protest, think Renata was the one that was pregnant. Consequently, Renata and Jodi have a lesbian fling. Life with her ex-sheriff father (Danny Aiello) and Zen-obsessed mother (Sally Kirkland) takes a dramatic turn during all of this, but somehow Renata is still the class valedictorian.