Teacher’s Pet Thrills @DWF 2025

Teacher’s Pet is a hidden gem that exceeded FERNTV‘s expectations. The film, which recently premiered at the Dances With Films Festival in LA. This thriller from director Noam Kroll has a superior ensemble that was headed by Michelle Torian, who plays Clara, a high school student who has a gift and a passion for writing. When one of her teachers passes away and Luke Barnett, who plays Mr. Heller, replaces her, she eventually becomes the teacher’s pet.He quickly develops a fondness for Clara and her work, asking her to be his assistant, which would further improve her grades and enhance her chances for a scholarship to an Ivy League school. Details about Mr. Heller’s sociopathic nature begin to emerge when the audience gets to know more about his private life and that his math isn’t mathing despite being a writing teacher.

Mr. Heller eventually becomes a significant hindrance to Clara’s private and family life. He questions Clara’s home life with her parents, in which the audience sees that she resides in a low-income and abusive setting with her mom, played by legendary Barbara Crompton. Mr. Heller also becomes a lot creepier when he starts to invade her privacy. This is through eavesdropping on her conversations and whereabouts with Clara’s boyfriend/drug dealer, Zach, played by Clayton Royal Johnson. Things start to immediately head south when Clara’s guidance counsellor, Mrs. Estrada, played by Sara Tomko, goes missing after she finds out that Clara spent the night at school trying to get a better grade by writing for Mr. Heller.

Teacher’s Pet makes you feel like you have seen this synopsis before. However, Noam Kroll’s film serves as a stark reminder that you haven’t, and it elevates you to a whole new level. Mr. Heller introduces us to the contemporary behaviour and activities of a sociopath. He wears a strong mask that hides his own private life, which he has failed to achieve himself, and we can see when he fakes his family for his mother.

We then see the flipside to the victims of a sociopath, such as Clara, who is very strong-minded and resilient for her age. These victims are usually those who are way more vulnerable than they appear. Clara, even though her writing is pushed by Mr. Heller, finds out that she is much stronger than she thinks.

Michelle Torian leads the film to a level where the audience is immersed to be 100% behind her. It’s because the film sets her up for the world versus Clara narrative once she receives news about her scholarship. Her friends, family and of course Mr. Heller are all in the running for making her life more miserable. But what can a girl do when her support system turns on her and she has to fend for herself?

Especially having to fend off creeps such as Mr. Heller, who says for his class to call him “Oh, Captain, My Captain.” Nothing is more eerie than this moment in the film when he asks the class where that quote is from, knowing that if he says that it is from the film Dead Poets Society, it would make him much older than he looks. He then pinpointed the quote to its original time, which was during Abraham Lincoln’s days. Now that’s creepy without being creepy. Nevertheless, director Noam Kroll goes into a deep dive into the life of a sociopath once they fall through the cracks of respectable institutions in Teacher’s Pet. And what it takes to get rid of them.