Director: J.C. Lee
How far would a brilliant, broke student go to buy her way out of the life she was born into? This thriller answers that question one exam at a time.
What is Bad Genius about?
At a private high school built for kids whose families can afford anything, one scholarship student stands out for a different reason: she's smarter than everyone in the room, including the teachers. When a wealthy classmate offers real money for a little help during a test, she says yes, and the arrangement quietly grows into a full operation — coded answers, timed signals, and a client list of students who can pay for what they can't learn on their own. The tighter the scheme gets, the higher the stakes climb, until a single national exam turns into the kind of high-wire operation that could either fund her way out of poverty or end her academic career in one afternoon. It plays out less like a heist and more like a slow-motion trap she built for herself.
Cast & crew
Callina Liang carries the film as the scholarship student whose intelligence becomes both her escape route and her liability, with Jabari Banks and Taylor Hickson as classmates pulled into her orbit for very different reasons. Benedict Wong brings weight to the adult side of the story, and director J.C. Lee keeps the tension centered on the exam room rather than melodrama outside it.
Context & significance
Bad Genius reworks the premise of a well-known cheating-scandal thriller for a Canadian high school setting, trading the original's globe-hopping heist energy for a tighter, more claustrophobic focus on class and opportunity. The film treats the exam itself as the set piece — clocks, proctors, and hidden signals doing the work usually reserved for a getaway car.
Where & how to watch
Bad Genius is available on K-Time with Farsi dubbing and Farsi subtitles, so the tension of the exam-room scenes carries over cleanly for Persian-speaking viewers. Reading about the film costs nothing; watching it just requires logging into a K-Time account, on a platform shaped around a Farsi-first experience for the diaspora.