Heathers review

 Number 932 on the top 1000 films of all time is the teen black-comedy 'Heathers.'

Veronika (Winona Ryder) is part of a high-school clique consisting of three girls all called Heather: Heather Duke (Shannon Doherty,) Heather McNamara (Lisanne Falk) and Heather Chandler (Kim Walker.) The same time she realises that her friends are ruthless bullies, she falls in love with the mysterious outsider JD (Christian Slater0 who has a plot to kill all the popular kids in school.

How to describe this film? Natural Born Killers set in a high school. But instead of the psychopathic Mickey and Mallory Knox, we have JD and the naive Veronika who he manipulates into being his unwitting accomplice.

In creating this film, director Michael Lehmann wanted to portray a darker side to high-school by turning the standard coming-of-age drama on its head. He certainly succeeded there. JD is a long way from Ferris Bueller. He is a damn sight creepier too although I'm not sure whether that was the character or Christian Slater. Seriously. JD is what I would imagine Klebold or Harris being like...

Although I think a more accurate comparison could be the Moors Murderers or Paul Bernado and Karla Homolka. However, the key difference is that Veronika quickly wisens up to JD's true agenda and decides to confront him.

In Heathers, Winona Rider was urr riding her success in Beetlejuice - a wave she continued riding throughout the nineties. She was good as Veronika who was perhaps the most self-aware character and perhaps the only character who wasn't some distorted stereotype. Christian Slater leaned too heavily into the moody outsider while the football players were overly-simplistic as well as the group of nerds they bullied. Yet, the Heathers knew exactly what they were doing, but they still weren't much more than your standard mean girls.

Heathers is also clever in its dissection of contemporary society - particularly with the romanticisation of suicide. Suicide is a recurring theme and we see how it affects different people in different ways. In some ways, Lehmann satirises this dark theme through his comical approach to it. But despite this satire, it is still treated with the respect it deserves.

Heathers was certainly an effective way to deconstruct the coming-of-age films that directors like Justin James Hughes made famous. It's just a shame that Christian Slater was so damn creepy.