Watching Heathers today, Daniel Waters’ deliciously dark comedy carries more than a few uncomfortable parallels to the modern teen experience, and it makes you wonder whether a movie like Heathers would get past the censors now without several trigger warnings. 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. That changed when it hit 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 put a ton of dynamite under the classic 80s teen comedy, exploring 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, the 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 dovetails with the need to break free of parental and social chains; it’s a savage, twisted dissection 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 one has to wonder whether 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 since JD and Veronica graced our screens, with more 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 since Heathers’ release, and it almost feels prophetic today.
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