Movie Title: Heathers
First Watch / Repeat Viewing
Running Time: 1 hr. and 43 min.
Rated: R
Who did I watch with?: Stephie
Where did I watch it?: Home
Review:
Veronica Sawyer (Winona Ryder) is a popular high school girl. She is part of a horrendous group of popular girls that treat everyone else, including each other, like trash. She hates them, but doesn’t see a way out. She goes to a party with clique leader Heather Chandler and promptly gets sick as a dog. A fight between the two ensues.
High school bad boy J.D. (Christian Slater) brings a gun to school and gets suspended for firing blanks at two upperclassmen that were threatening him. He has a thing for Veronica and goes over to her house. They go to visit Heather where they poison her with drain cleaner. Having killed her, Veronica writes a suicide note, and J.D. arranges the scene to make it look like a suicide. This quickly deteriorates into a double murder also made to look like a suicide. Veronica allows herself to get duped into both scenarios, but she was more than willing to go along with it. This leads to a transformation in the behavior of certain students at the school. The emotional manipulation of J.D. toward Veronica doesn’t make him any better than anyone else at the school.
The movie builds to a dark conclusion. Despite being exceptionally dark the movie is also very funny. It makes fun of adult perceptions and some realities of teenage drama and satirizes high school to the extreme.
Verdict:
It is an interesting and uniquely 80s movie. See it.
Tomorrow’s Movie: Good Will Hunting (1997)
