Heathers can be described on the surface as a camp cult film. Most of the characters don't act quite human in their performances and behavior, the costumes are over the top, and there's some extremely dark comedy. However, these aspects also create a tone of deep psychological discomfort. The disturbing nature of the story is only highlighted by the unreality of the visuals and acting, and the dreamlike, bizarre tone was both enthralling and unsettling.
Veronica Sawyer regrets the choice to join the Heathers, a clique of three privileged girls with the same name ruling their high school. As she finds herself hurting her old friends and getting into a shallow, sexually abusive party scene, Veronica wishes death on Heather Chandler, the leader, more each day. Bad boy JD is there to help make that come true, pushing Veronica further into murder while the two frame the deaths as suicides. The film gets shades of Macbeth as Veronica realizes how dangerous JD is and gets haunted by their victims, and JD starts to turn into a colossal threat to the whole school.
The film's commentary doesn't pull punches, so sexism, homophobia, and suicide are major presences. The worst attitudes of the 1980s are shown in full force, and a major theme is the way suicide grief can be turned into a self-serving event that precludes the evils of the victims. The story makes the interesting and perhaps tactful choice, though, of having all of the mourned victims not be actual suicides so the perception is examined without actual cases, and real suicidal ideation and mental torment is taken seriously in the story. The film also hits extremely hard in ways it couldn't have known due to the attack on the school itself evoking later real incidents, all of which framed the film for me as more genuinely (yet effectively) harrowing than it was trying to be. It's hard to watch, but the school attack was a prescient story beat that addressed the topic well in hindsight.
This film is intense and disturbing and yet its tone is hypnotic and funny enough, with its heart in the right place, to make it brilliant. It might have only wanted to be a subversive genre takedown, but it also offers brutal commentary and a compelling, scary, surreal watch.
Film A film with less heavy intentions that ages well as a terrifying satire.
Heathers can be described on the surface as a camp cult film. Most of the characters don't act quite human in their performances and behavior, the costumes are over the top, and there's some extremely dark comedy. However, these aspects also create a tone of deep psychological discomfort. The disturbing nature of the story is only highlighted by the unreality of the visuals and acting, and the dreamlike, bizarre tone was both enthralling and unsettling.
Veronica Sawyer regrets the choice to join the Heathers, a clique of three privileged girls with the same name ruling their high school. As she finds herself hurting her old friends and getting into a shallow, sexually abusive party scene, Veronica wishes death on Heather Chandler, the leader, more each day. Bad boy JD is there to help make that come true, pushing Veronica further into murder while the two frame the deaths as suicides. The film gets shades of Macbeth as Veronica realizes how dangerous JD is and gets haunted by their victims, and JD starts to turn into a colossal threat to the whole school.
The film's commentary doesn't pull punches, so sexism, homophobia, and suicide are major presences. The worst attitudes of the 1980s are shown in full force, and a major theme is the way suicide grief can be turned into a self-serving event that precludes the evils of the victims. The story makes the interesting and perhaps tactful choice, though, of having all of the mourned victims not be actual suicides so the perception is examined without actual cases, and real suicidal ideation and mental torment is taken seriously in the story. The film also hits extremely hard in ways it couldn't have known due to the attack on the school itself evoking later real incidents, all of which framed the film for me as more genuinely (yet effectively) harrowing than it was trying to be. It's hard to watch, but the school attack was a prescient story beat that addressed the topic well in hindsight.
This film is intense and disturbing and yet its tone is hypnotic and funny enough, with its heart in the right place, to make it brilliant. It might have only wanted to be a subversive genre takedown, but it also offers brutal commentary and a compelling, scary, surreal watch.