Netflix has been experimenting with micro-dramas of late, where episodes are less than ten minutes. They’re fast-paced but are generally well-plotted, which is what we found with the Colombian series Salcedo, Leather And Boogaloo. Now comes a thriller teen drama from Mexico, Final Project.

Opening Shot: At night in the woods. Three teenagers pull a covered body out of the trunk of a car, trying to reassure each other that the person is actually dead.

The Gist: One month earlier, at the private Campos Academy high school, we meet five students in a literature class. Tamara (Daniela Martínez Caballero) transferred into the school a few years prior; she’s considered “weird” by most of the rest of her class, some of whom call her a “goth girl” or “she-vampire.” Her best friend Dani (Virgilio Delgado) is forever filming people for a documentary he’s working on. The most popular kid in school, Xavi (Tristán Maze), does live streams with his best friend, Pato (Ian Sparrowe), doing dumb things like tapping himself on the face with a hammer. Samantha (Isabella Tena) is Xavi’s girlfriend and likes to show that fact off to everyone — but cheats on him repeatedly.

The literature class is supposed to do a final project that’s going to be a big part of their grade. Tamara and Dani are working on a documentary about cyberbullying, which Tamara continues to be a victim of. Xavi tells the teacher that he doesn’t have a project in mind, but he tells Pato otherwise: His project is to see if he can take Tamara’s virginity.

At the same time, Tamara wants to include Xavi in the documentary, to give a different perspective on bullying. He gets crapped on by his classmates for Samantha’s cheating, and according to Tamara, she wants to see how the “the victimizer becomes the victim.”

Aside from the general cyberbullying from her classmates, though, Tamara is also being threatened online by an anonymous person who knows about her previous identity and why she had to transfer from her previous school. The person seems to know her every move, and while she seems to be able to handle the general bullying, this particular stalker is really starting to get her scared.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? A 2015 film called Cyberbully had a similar subject matter to Final Project, created by Bernardo Izaza Capdevielle, though the vibe of this micro-drama feels more like Elite than anything else.

Our Take: Normally, the micro-drama format of a show like Final Project would be a disservice to a story that potentially has so many twists and turns. But each 7-to-10-minute episode (including credits, so the runtime is really more like 5 to 8 minutes) pushes the story forward to a satisfying-enough degree to keep viewers from rolling their eyes at the pacing or thinking that all the characters are one-dimensional.

It helps that there are 20 episodes, which puts the runtime at almost three hours. There’s enough time to dig into the characters a bit, as we see in the fourth episode when Xavi talks to a therapist about why he seems to have disdain for women.

Even so, there are a lot of aspects of this show that only go so deep, and some parts of the story feel rushed, like the connection that develops between Tamara and Xavi, even as they’re both trying to use each other for their particular final projects. Tamara’s past is going to be revealed at some point, and in a longer series that story might be examined in a series of flashbacks. But we get the feeling that here it will be more tell than show, with whoever the bully who is stalking Tamara revealing bits and pieces to her over DMs as she tries to figure out who the person is.

Performance Worth Watching: Daniela Martínez Caballero actually brings an air of mystery to Tamara that could be seen as strange by her classmates, even though her brand of weirdness still seems to be firmly within the range of mainstream aesthetics. Blue streaks in her hair or a penchant to wear men’s suit jackets does not make a teen girl weird — just uniquely fashionable.

Sex And Skin: None, and the TV-MA rating for the show seems to be more about violence and “mature themes” than it is about sex or nudity.

Parting Shot: After Tamara likes Xavi’s livestream, Xavi DMs her to say that he liked her like. Let the co-using begin!

Sleeper Star: There seems to be more to Virgilio Delgado’s character Dani than meets the eye. He says he thinks of Tamara like a sister, but it seems like he’s caught feelings for her. In addition, there is a very good chance that he could be the anonymous DMer that seems to know a lot about Tamara’s past.

Most Pilot-y Line: Xavi is typical for a teen drama popular kid: He’s from a wealthy family and seems to have absent and/or disinterested parents. Why can’t the bad guy for once be something other than a spoiled rich kid?

Our Call: STREAM IT. Final Project‘s episodes may be short, but there’s enough of them to get some insight into the main characters and build up some tension in what is ultimately more of a thriller than a teen drama.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.