Movie Review: Heathers (1988)

Heathers is a cult classic with a wonderfully satirical black comedy premise. The movie starts in a very strange way, with the three Heathers all playing croquet with Veronica’s (Winona Ryder) head.

Not a great start to the movie, but the movie really gets going when we see these four characters interact in high school. The three Heathers are basically the characters from Mean Girls, using Veronica to bully other students. J.D. (Christian Slater) notices this and becomes friends with Veronica. J.D. eventually kills one of the Heathers, and he and Veronica work to create a suicide note.

While they were apparently hoping her death would get people to realize that she was a bad person, they’re shocked to find that she is more popular in death. To overly simplify the rest of the movie, J.D. and Veronica go around killing people they think are bad, and using clever tactics to make them look like suicide.

It’s a clever satire on the high school experience — which is something that filmmakers are way too obsessed with. It’s a clever movie. It’s not laugh-out-loud funny as far as comedies go, but it’s effective for what it’s trying to do.

Rating: 7/10