Gossip

Gossip (2000) is an American thriller directed by Davis Guggenheim — watch it online on iFILM. Three journalism students launch what they call a social experiment: plant a single false rumor about the most popular girl on campus and track how it spreads. Clean, controlled, academic. Then it stops being any of those things.

The rumor mutates into a rape accusation. The police get involved. James Marsden, Norman Reedus, and Kate Hudson play the trio who started it, and the film steadily tightens the question of who knows what actually happened — and whether the distinction between "what we said" and "what occurred" still matters once the story is out there.

For a 2000 studio thriller, it gets more mileage out of its premise than expected — the mechanics of how information distorts under social pressure feel more relevant now than they probably did at the time. Stream Gossip (2000) online on iFILM.