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Movies like Child's Play

Key Features:
School setting, Rivalry, Secrets, Suspicion, Psychological thriller, Hidden agenda, Power dynamics, Feud
Tone:
suspense-driven, serious
Target Audience:
Fans of suspense thrillers, Viewers interested in mysteries, Those who enjoy school dramas, Adults
Emotional Arc:
Intrigue → Suspicion → Unease

Child's Play

1972-12-12
Child's Play Poster - Find Similar Movies

At an exclusive boys' school, a new gym teacher is drawn into a feud between two older instructors, and he discovers that everything at the school is not quite as staid, tranquil and harmless as it seems.

Genres
Drama, Mystery, Thriller
Cast
James Mason, Robert Preston, Beau Bridges, Ron Weyand, Charles White, David Rounds, Kate Harrington, Jamie Alexander, Brian Chapin, Bryant Fraser
Crew
Sidney Lumet, Leon Prochnik
Rating
6(52 votes)
Child's PlayChild's Play
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School's Out
6

Pierre Hoffman joins a prestigious school as a substitute teacher and soon notices, among some of his students, an unjustified hostility and a spark of violence in their eyes. Is it because the unspeakable tragedy they have just experienced? Is it because they seem to be extraordinarily gifted children? Is it because they have lost all hope for the future? From curiosity to obsession, Pierre will try to unlock their secret.



Blame
Blame(2018)
6.578

A drama teacher's taboo relationship with an unstable student strikes a nerve in her jealous classmate, sparking a vengeful chain of events within their suburban high school that draws parallels to "The Crucible".



Gym Class
Gym Class(2023)
5.9

Three middle school parents are summoned by the principal after their children are implicated in a serious incident. In the gym, transformed into an impromptu courtroom, they wage a fierce battle of denials and obfuscations to suppress the truth.



The Teachers' Lounge
7.237

When one of her students is suspected of theft, teacher Carla Nowak decides to get to the bottom of the matter. Caught between her ideals and the school system, the consequences of her actions threaten to break her.



An Affair
An Affair(2018)
5.4

A newly appointed teacher finds herself being followed, and soon discovers that one of her own students is obsessed with her.



The Teacher
6.8

The principal of an elementary school calls a special parents meeting after it’s alleged that the seemingly empathetic and kindly-looking teacher Mrs. Drazděchová uses her students to manipulate their parents.



Cracks
Cracks(2009)
6.6

Jealousy flares after the headmistress of an elite boarding school for girls becomes obsessed with a new student.



Dirty Teacher
5.809

When a high school senior discovers her teacher is seducing her boyfriend, events turn deadly after the teacher tries to cover it up.



The Lesson
4.176

Two schoolboy delinquents learn a lesson that they will never forget when a teacher at the end of his tether decides to abduct them.



Dead Poets Society
8.3

At an elite, old-fashioned boarding school in New England, a passionate English teacher inspires his students to rebel against convention and seize the potential of every day, courting the disdain of the stern headmaster.



School's Out
5.827

A few days before the baccalaureate, a high school student decides to settle accounts with the most cowardly teacher in the school.



Absent
Absent(2011)
6

Sebastiano teaches high school gym classes and coaches swimming. He’s got a job, a girlfriend, and a pretty normal life. But as young Martin starts to infiltrate Sebastiano’s life, his world will get turned upside down. Eerie from the first frame, this Hitchcockian thriller portrays sexual obsession with terrifying realism.



Lesson Plan
6.025

After a teacher dies, his best friend — a former cop — takes a job at the school where he worked to confront the gang he thinks was responsible.



Match Point
7.356

Chris, a former tennis pro, takes a job as an instructor and befriends his wealthy young student, Tom. After being introduced to his family, Chris is soon engaged to Tom's sister, Chloe. Despite the professional and financial advantages that this relationship affords him, Chris becomes obsessed with Tom's fiancee, American actress Nola.



Detachment
7.617

A chronicle of three weeks in the lives of several high school teachers, administrators and students through the eyes of substitute teacher, Henry Barthes. Henry roams from school to school, imparting modes of knowledge, but never staying long enough to form any semblance of sentient attachment.



Notes on a Scandal
7.088

A veteran high school teacher befriends a younger art teacher, who is having an affair with one of her 15-year-old students. However, her intentions with this new "friend" also go well beyond platonic friendship.



Armand
Armand(2024)
6.376

Armand, a 6-year-old boy, is accused of crossing boundaries against his best friend at elementary school. While no one knows what actually happened between the two boys, the incident triggers a series of events, forcing parents and school staff into a captivating battle of redemption where madness, desire and obsession arise.



School of Life
6.396

At Fallbrook Middle School, the annual student-elected Teacher of the Year award is held. And every year for the last 43 years Norman Warner or most fondly called Stormin' Norman Warner has won the award. Now that he has died, the burden of carrying the legacy falls into the hands of Matt Warner, the son of the late Norman Warner who has always lived in the shadow of his father.



Teachers
Teachers(1984)
5.605

A teacher reconnects with an old student who is now an attorney representing a family who is suing the school for graduating their son who still cannot read or write. Amid the daily chaos of teaching in an inner city school, Alex Jurel tries to decide if he will lie at his deposition to protect the school or tell the truth and risk throwing away his career.



Boarding School
6.328

When troubled 12-year-old Jacob Felsen is sent away to boarding school, he enters every kid’s worst nightmare: a creepy old mansion, deserted except for six other teenage misfits and two menacing and mysterious teachers. As events become increasingly horrific, Jacob must conquer his fears to find the strength to survive.



F
F(2010)
6.106

A group of teachers must defend themselves from a gang of murderous kids when their school comes under siege after hours.



Children of the Night

Somewhere in the bleak Italian Alps is an isolated boarding school for troubled boys of the ultra privileged. 17-year old Giulio is sent there by his mother and finds himself instantly at odds with both his peers and the staff until the arrival of the eccentric Eduordo. The pair bond over their mutual desire for escape, which they eventually do, and run away to a nightclub in the middle of the woods. There they meet Elena, a young prostitute whose destiny will be unforgettably linked to theirs. For the boys, the night is full of freedom, disturbing experiences, and secrets. But what they discover about their experiences, and their school, may be the biggest secret of all.



Old Boys
Old Boys(2018)
6.558

In the school-set re-working of Cyrano, an awkward but imaginative pupil helps the handsome but spectacularly dim school-hero pursue the fiery daughter of a visiting French teacher.



Pathology
Pathology(2008)
5.7

Medical student Ted Grey graduates at the top of his class and quickly joins an elite pathology program, whose top students invite him into their circle. There he uncovers a gruesome secret: They play a game in which one tries to commit the perfect, undetectable murder, then the others compete to determine the victim's cause of death.



Diabolique
5.5

The wife and mistress of a cruel school master collaborate in a carefully planned and executed scheme to murder him. The plan goes well until the body, which has been strategically dumped, disappears. The psychological strain starts to weigh on the two women when a retired police investigator begins looking into the man's disappearance on a whim.



Virginia
Virginia(2010)
5.2

A sheriff sees his state senate bid slide out onto the ice when his daughter begins to date the son of a charming but psychologically disturbed woman with whom the sheriff has engaged in a two-decade-long affair.



State of Play
6.799

When a congressional aide is killed, a Washington, D.C. journalist starts investigating the case involving the Representative, his old college friend.



A Teacher
A Teacher(2013)
4.495

Diana Watts, a high school teacher in Austin, Texas, is in the midst of an affair with one of her students, Eric Tull. As the reality of their situation forces itself upon them, Diana puts the relationship on hold. It’s only a matter of time before she gives in again to her desire; this time even more recklessly than before.



Yulenka
Yulenka(2009)
5.7

A university professor, who wants to slow down a little, moves with his wife and daughter, from the big city to a small town and starts a new job as a teacher in a girls' gymnasium. Something weird is happening with the class, they seem to hide a secret. As it turns out, these girls don't play with dolls...



Diabolique
7.912

The cruel and abusive headmaster of a boarding school, Michel Delassalle, is murdered by an unlikely duo -- his meek wife and the mistress he brazenly flaunts. The women become increasingly unhinged by a series of odd occurrences after Delassalle's corpse mysteriously disappears.



Ordinary People
7.461

A gym teacher and his female student look for her missing friend. But as they investigate, they find that her disappearance is a part of a larger conspiracy.



The Children's Hour
7.675

An unruly student at a private all-girls boarding school scandalously accuses the two women who run it of having a romantic relationship.



Cheaters
Cheaters(2000)
6.2

In the fall of 1994, a teacher at Chicago's run-down Steinmetz High conspires with the school's academic decathlon team to cheat on an academic competition.



Amusement
Amusement(2008)
5.596

While being interrogated by a police psychiatrist, the near-catatonic Tabitha tries to explain why she and two of her childhood friends are being hunted by a serial killer. The truth that's dying to come out weaves together three tragic secrets from their past. Two of the girls' boyfriends become unwitting targets in their deadly game.



Carry On Teacher
6.3

When a well-loved headmaster decides to retire, his scheming pupils have other ideas. The cunning boys unleash a campaign of practical jokes, armed with gin, itching power, and bombs!



Miss Meadows
5.904

Miss Meadows is a school teacher with impeccable manners and grace. However, underneath the candy-sweet exterior hides a ruthless gun-toting vigilante who takes it upon herself to right the wrongs in the world by whatever means necessary. For Miss Meadows, bad behavior is simply unforgivable.



The Browning Version
6.439

Andrew Crocker-Harris is an embittered and disliked teacher of Greek and Latin at a British prep school. After nearly 20 years of service, he is being forced to retire for 'health reasons', and perhaps may not even be given a pension. The boys regard him as a Hitler, with some justification. His unfaithful wife Laura tries to hurt him in any way she can. Andrew must come to terms with his failed life and at least regain his own self-esteem.



Class Act
Class Act(1992)
6.142

Duncan is a genius straight A student, Blade is juvenile delinquent. But because of a mix up with their school records, everyone thinks each is the other one. Now, Duncan kind of likes the attention from being thought of as a real bad dude, if only the school bully would stop trying to rough him up. And Blade definitely likes being thought of as important instead of as trouble.



if....
if....(1968)
7.1

In an English boys' boarding school, social hierarchy reigns supreme and power remains in the hands of distanced and ineffectual teachers and callously vicious prefects in the Upper Sixth. Three Lower Sixth students, Wallace, Johnny and leader Mick Travis decide on a shocking course of action to redress the balance of privilege once and for all.



Lolita
Lolita(1962)
7.312

Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged British novelist who is both appalled by and attracted to the vulgarity of American culture. When he comes to stay at the boarding house run by Charlotte Haze, he soon becomes obsessed with Lolita, the woman's teenaged daughter.



Confessions
7.577

Devastated at the death of her four-year-old daughter, a grieving middle school teacher is horrified to discover that her students aren't as innocent as she thinks.



Holland
Holland(2025)
5.389

Teacher Nancy's life with her husband in Holland, Michigan, tumbles into a twisted tale when she and a colleague become suspicious of a secret.



The Teacher
6.547

Teacher in the most prestigious highschool in the country, François enjoys the life he’s always known, in the intellectual and bourgeois society of Paris. Trapped in a situation where he’s forced to accept a job in a school of a tough underprivileged suburb, he finds himself confronted to his own limits and to the upheaval of his values and certainties.



Vampire
Vampire(2011)
6

An outwardly normal schoolteacher preys on suicidal women to slake his overwhelming thirst for human blood.



Monster
Monster(2023)
7.928

After an outburst at school involving her son, a concerned single mother demands answers, triggering a sequence of deepening suspicion and turmoil.



Private School
5.7

Private-school student Christine loves Jim. But her classmate, Jordan, is also vying for Jim's attention and trying to end his relationship with Christine. Meanwhile, Jim's friend Bubba embarks on a series of sexual escapades, including dressing up as a woman to access the girls' locker room. Despite Jim and Christine's efforts to spend some time alone, various shenanigans and schemes interfere.



M
M(1951)
6.305

Remake of the 1931 Fritz Lang original. In the city, someone is murdering children. The Police search is so intense, it is disturbing the 'normal' criminals, and the local hoods decide to help find the murderer as quickly as possible.



School Ties
6.5

When David Greene receives a football scholarship to a prestigious prep school in the 1950s, he feels pressure to hide the fact that he is Jewish from his classmates and teachers, fearing that they may be anti-Semitic. He quickly becomes the big man on campus thanks to his football skills, but when his Jewish background is discovered, his worst fears are realized and his friends turn on him with violent threats and public ridicule.



Consenting Adults
5.4

Richard and Priscilla Parker are an ordinary suburban couple whose lives are invaded and rocked by their hedonistic, secretive new neighbors, Eddy and Kay Otis.



Black Island
5.894

The dark secrets of a seemingly peaceful island threaten to swallow up an orphaned student when he grows close to a mysterious new teacher.



Cutting Class
5.009

High school student Paula Carson's affections are being sought after by two of her classmates: Dwight, the "bad boy", and Brian, a disturbed young man who has just been released from a mental hospital where he was committed following the suspicious death of his father. Soon after being released, more murders start happening. Is Brian back to his old tricks, or is Dwight just trying to eliminate the competition?



Words and Pictures
6.4

An art instructor and an English teacher form a rivalry that ends up with a competition at their school in which students decide whether words or pictures are more important.



Innocent Thing
6.532

A high school teacher whose wife is about to give birth finds himself tangled in temptation and obsession when a student falls for him.



The Kindergarten Teacher

Lisa Spinelli is a Staten Island teacher who is unusually devoted to her students. When she discovers one of her five-year-olds is a prodigy, she becomes fascinated with the boy, ultimately risking her family and freedom to nurture his talent.



Jealous
Jealous(2017)
5.9

A divorced teacher suddenly becomes jealous of everyone, including her daughter, friends and neighbors.



Ski School
5.1

Rival groups in a skiing school do battle on and off the piste. One gang are rich and serious, the other group are party animals.



The Elementary School

The time is 1945-46. 10 year old Eda and his friend Tonda live in a small village outside Prague. In school, their class is so wild and indisciplined that their teacher quits and is replaced by the militant Igor Hnidzo. He is very strict – but also very fair. His weakness though, is his interest in young women.



Class
Class(1983)
6

Naive Midwestern prep student Jonathan bonds with his more worldly roommate, Skip, who takes the small-town boy under his wing. At Skip's urging, the inexperienced Jonathan is emboldened to seek out older women in the cocktail lounges of nearby Chicago, where he meets and beds the alluring Ellen, who unfortunately turns out to be Skip's mother. The division between the friends is further deepened when a cheating scandal engulfs the school.



Wild Things
6.361

When teen-socialite Kelly Van Ryan and troubled bad girl Suzie Toller accuse guidance counselor Sam Lombardo of rape, he's suspended by the school, rejected by the town, and fighting to get his life back. One cop suspects conspiracy, but nothing is what it seems...



The Offence
6.8

A burned-out British police detective finally snaps while interrogating a suspected child molester.



Detainment
6.697

Two ten year-old boys are detained by police under suspicion of abducting and murdering a toddler.



Weapons
Weapons(2025)
7.328

When all but one child from the same class mysteriously vanish on the same night at exactly the same time, a community is left questioning who or what is behind their disappearance.



Fright
Fright(1971)
6

Young babysitter Amanda arrives at the Lloyd residence to spend the evening looking after their young son. Soon after the Lloyds leave, a series of frightening occurrences in the gloomy old house have Amanda's nerves on edge. The real terror begins, however, when the child's biological father appears after recently escaping from a nearby mental institution.



Blackboard Jungle
6.9

Richard Dadier is a teacher at North Manual High School, an inner-city school where many of the pupils frequently engage in anti-social behavior. Dadier makes various attempts to engage the students' interest in education, challenging both the school staff and the pupils. He is subjected to violence as well as duplicitous schemes.



The Substitute
5.568

6th Grade gets a new substitute teacher. She wants to train the class for an international competition in Paris. But something isn't right. How is she able read kids' minds? Why is she so mean? And how does she manage to convince everyone's parents she is so great when the whole class knows she is really an alien?



The Emperor's Club
7.121

William Hundert is a passionate and principled Classics professor who finds his tightly-controlled world shaken and inexorably altered when a new student, Sedgewick Bell, walks into his classroom. What begins as a fierce battle of wills gives way to a close student-teacher relationship, but results in a life lesson for Hundert that will still haunt him a quarter of a century later.



Detention
Detention(2003)
4.419

A heroic high school teacher leads a band of students trapped in school by violent drug-runners.



My Mistress
5.172

After the death of his father, a 16-year-old boy struggles with anger and instability, distancing himself from his mother. His search for escape leads him to a lonely dominatrix living nearby, a woman accustomed to giving and controlling pain. Drawn to her world, he seeks both solace and love, while she finds herself pulled into a bond that neither expected but both need.



Storytelling
6.5

College and high school serve as the backdrop for two stories about dysfunction and personal turmoil.



White Wedding
6.5

A philosophy professor has an illicit affair with one of his students, a bright yet troubled girl who lives alone.



Summer School
6.4

A high-school gym teacher has big plans for the summer, but is forced to cancel them to teach a "bonehead" English class for misfit goof-off students. Fortunately, his unconventional brand of teaching fun field trips begins to connect with them, and even inspires ardor in some.



Fist Fight
6.052

When one school teacher gets the other fired, he is challenged to an after-school fight.



Macabre
Macabre(1980)
5.683

A middle-aged woman, traumatized from the death of her adulterous lover, moves into a room at a New Orleans boarding house where the blind landlord becomes suspicious to her activities of continuing her affair with her dead lover.



Lesson of the Evil
6.6

Seiji Hasumi is a popular English teacher in a private high school. He is also a violent and sociopathic killer who concocts an extreme plan to deal with the rise of bullying and bad behavior among the student body.



The Perfect Teacher

A spoiled, selfish teenager becomes infatuated with her teacher. She befriends his daughter as a way of worming her way into the family, and sets about manipulating every aspect of his life.



Class of 1984
6.4

Andy is a new teacher at an inner city high school that is unlike any he has seen before. There are metal detectors at the front door and the place is basically run by a tough kid named Peter Stegman. Soon, Andy and Stegman become enemies and Stegman will stop at nothing to protect his turf and drug dealing business.



Cohen and Tate
6.5

A boy kidnapped by two mismatched hitmen puts them at each other's throats while being driven to their employers, possibly to be killed. Cohen, an older professional becomes increasingly irritated with his partner Tate, a brutish killer, when their prisoner uses unnatural guile and resourcefulness to play them off against each other.



Prodigy
Prodigy(2017)
6.106

Jimmy is a committed child psychologist who uses his own playbook, but when he is brought in to work with Ellie, he is completely unprepared for his subject—a 9-year-old psychopathic genius with nothing to lose. As he begins to understand the extent of her capabilities and the fate that has been planned for her, he struggles to overcome her defenses before it is too late for them both.



School for Scoundrels

In the hope of winning the woman of his dreams, Amanda, lovelorn meter-reader Roger Wadell enrolls in a secret confidence-building class. The course's title takes on much more meaning when he discovers that his egomaniacal professor Dr. P also wants the same woman. They begin a fierce rivalry that quickly spirals out of control, their pranks and insults get uglier as they try to prove who is the ultimate guy's guy.



Fear in the Night
5.78

It took Peggy Heller a long time to recover from the trauma of a brutal physical assault, suffered in her youth. When she married Robert, he provided her with the love and reassurance she craved for and the two settled down in a pretty house in the grounds of the public school where Robert was a master. But the headmaster of the school is not what he seems and Peggy is convinced he means to harm her - is her fear a figment of her tortured imagination or are there forces at work that intend to manipulate her anxieties with fatal consequences?



One Eight Seven
6.6

After surviving a stabbing by a student, teacher Trevor Garfield moves from New York to Los Angeles. There, he resumes teaching as a substitute teacher. The education system, where violent bullies control the classrooms and the administration is afraid of lawsuits, slowly drives Garfield mad. He then moves to California to be a sub for a predominantly Native Hispanic/Latin-American high school in Los Angeles. He is tormented by members of a Native Hispanic/Latino-American tag crew named K.O.S. (Kappin’ off Suckaz).



School of Life
7.338

Paris 1930. Paul has only ever had one and the same horizon: the high walls of the orphanage, an austere building in the Parisian working class suburbs. Entrusted to a joyful country woman, Célestine, and her husband, Borel, the rather stiff gamekeeper of a vast estate in Sologne, the city child, recalcitrant and stubborn, arrives in a mysterious and disturbing world, that of a sovereign and wild region. The huge forest, misty ponds, heaths, and fields all belong to the Count de la Fresnaye, an elderly taciturn man who lives alone in his manor.



P.R.O.F.S.
6.123

A clique of four young teachers at a high school looks critically at their colleagues. To avoid falling in the same routine, they bring new ideas into the school lessons and play little games and pranks in their spare time -- sometimes get even more childish than their pupils. When they get opposition from the other teachers, they play tricks to get rid of them.



Steve
Steve(2025)
6.335

Over one intense day, the devoted head teacher of a last-chance reform school strives to keep his students in line while facing pressures of his own.



Wanted
Wanted(2008)
6.5

Doormat Wesley Gibson is an office worker whose life is going nowhere. He meets an attractive woman named Fox and discovers that his recently murdered father - whom Wesley never knew - belonged to the Fraternity, a secret society of assassins which takes its orders from Fate itself. Fox and Sloan, the Fraternity's leader, teach Wesley, through intense training, to tap into dormant powers and hone his innate killing skills. Though he enjoys his newfound abilities, he begins to suspect that there is more to the Fraternity than meets the eye.



Trust
Trust(2024)
6.387

Pietro is a revered teacher, Teresa his brilliant and precocious student. Their affair is both illicit and tempestuous. After one fight, Teresa suggests that each tell the other a secret, one so shameful or shocking that were it to be made public, it would destroy that person’s life. Time passes, Pietro’s stature as a writer grows and his family settles into the comfort of a bourgeois life. But he is haunted by the possibility that Teresa may one day reappear and tear apart his world with the secret she knows.



The History Boys
6.6

The story of an unruly class of bright, funny history students at a Yorkshire grammar school in pursuit of an undergraduate place at Oxford or Cambridge. Bounced between their maverick English master, a young and shrewd teacher hired to up their test scores, a grossly out-numbered history teacher, and a headmaster obsessed with results, the boys attempt to pass.



Simon Birch
6.8

Simon Birch and Joe Wenteworth are boys who have a reputation for being oddballs. Joe never knew his father, and his mother, Rebecca, is keeping her lips sealed no matter how much he protests. Simon, meanwhile, is an 11-year-old dwarf whose outsize personality belies his small stature. Indeed, he often assails the local reverend with thorny theological questions and joins Joe on his quest to find his biological father.



Teacher's Pet
6.8

A rugged city editor poses as a journalism student and flirts with the professor.



The Education of Charlie Banks

College student Charlie Banks has to face old problems when the bully he had an unpleasant encounter with back in high school shows up on his campus.



Secretary
Secretary(2002)
6.8

A young woman, recently released from a mental hospital, gets a job as a secretary to a demanding lawyer, where their employer-employee relationship turns into a sexual, sadomasochistic one.



Sleuth
Sleuth(1972)
7.675

A man who loves games and theater invites his wife's lover to meet him, setting up a battle of wits with potentially deadly results.



Rachel, Rachel
6.538

Rachel is a 35-year-old school teacher who has no man in her life and lives with her mother. When a man from the big city returns and asks her out, she begins to have to make decisions about her life and where she wants it to go.



The Boy Next Door
4.9

A recently cheated on married woman falls for a younger man who has moved in next door, but their torrid affair soon takes a dangerous turn.



Text
Text(2008)
6.1

Four friends search for the answers to a series of deadly text messages killing students at their high school.



Down a Dark Hall
5.6

Kit, a troubled girl, is sent to the exclusive Blackwood boarding school, where she discovers that only four other female students have been admitted to learn the four pillars of knowledge under the ominous wing of the mysterious headmistress Madame Duret.



WarGames
WarGames(1983)
7.069

High school student David Lightman has a talent for hacking. But while trying to hack into a computer system to play unreleased video games, he unwittingly taps into the Department of Defense's war computer and initiates a confrontation of global proportions. Together with his friend and a wizardly computer genius, David must race against time to outwit his opponent and prevent a nuclear Armageddon.



Playground
7.029

When Nora witnesses Abel being bullied by other kids, she rushes to protect him by warning their father. But Abel forces her to remain silent. Caught in a conflict of loyalty, Nora will ultimately try to find her place, torn between children's and adult's worlds.



Jasper Jones
6.4

Fourteen-year-old Charlie's life changes when Jasper takes his help to dispose of the body of his girlfriend, Laura. He decides to look for the murderer and falls in love with Laura's younger sister.

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