Heathers (1989)

Heathers is available now on Arrow Blu-ray and digital.

Despite the critics lapping it up, it’s hard to believe that Michael Lehmann’s pitch-black comedy starring Christian Slater and Winona Ryder wasn’t a glowing success with audiences on its limited cinema release in 1989. However, that was to change when it hit VHS and video stores, and like so many cult classics, found an eager young fanbase. By the mid-1990s, Heathers was heralded as one of the best teen comedies of the late 1980s; its sharp observational humour was layered with a cutting dissection of high school American culture. Heathers would put a ton of dynamite under the classic 80s teen comedy as it explored the inherent darkness of the adolescent mind in a devilishly brilliant story of division, wealth, privilege and bullying.

Seventeen-year-old Veronica (Winona Ryder) is desperate to belong in the jungle of high school life, and she couldn’t be happier when she is accepted into the alpha mean girls club Heathers. However, when Veronica meets the mysterious JD (Christian Slater), and the veneer rubs off the Heathers, her high school life takes a deadly detour.

Daniel Waters was twenty-three when he wrote the script for Heathers, initially as a Kubrick project. It is, therefore, fascinating that, like Kubrick’s The Shining and Eyes Wide Shut, Heathers has attracted multiple outlandish theories over the years from its legion of loyal fans. But putting these aside, Lehmann’s movie marked an important transition for the coming of age comedy, where the 80s template created by John Hughes gave way to something far darker as the 90s came into view. Heathers screenplay is, at its heart, a social satire, reflecting the darker hues of high-school life and the ever-growing inequality of the late 80s capitalist dream. Here, the teenage need for popularity, place and purpose is dovetailed with the need to break free of parental and social chains; it’s a subverted and twisted version of The Breakfast Club that defies the suggestion that all kids are, ultimately, the same.

Watching Heathers today, Waters’ deliciously dark comedy carries more than a few uncomfortable parallels to the modern teen experience and as a result, one has to wonder if a movie like Heathers would get past the censors now without several trigger warnings. This is a story that includes themes of school violence, bulimia, internalised homophobia, sexual assault, suicide and terrorism. Some may argue that the teenage high school experience has changed over the years since JD and Veronica graced our screens, with more of a focus on mental health and inclusion, but is that really the case? Or was Heathers a satirical warning from the late eighties that still rings true? While our society is more connected than ever, a feeling of isolation and alienation among teens has only grown in the years since Heathers release, and here it almost feels prophetic of today.