Michael Lehmann
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Connections, in both directions
The entire sub-genre was basically worked over in Heathers’ wake, with movies like Mean Girls and Jawbreaker and television shows like Buffy the Vampire Slayer depicting high school as a virtual (sometimes literal) hellscape — jaded, cynical, bitter little pills.
The early part of Mean Girls is like a mixture of Heathers (1989) and Goodfellas (1990), complete with breezy, journalistic narration: The nonconforming outcast Janis Ian (Lizzy Caplan)—not the singer-songwriter but maybe a tribute to her—lays out the school's sundry cliques and draws a map of the segregated cafeteria.
Like Heathers with the edges filed down a bit...the kind of smooth, clever (and rare) entertainment that critics and audiences can all enjoy, guilt-free.
Sheâs hot, of course, so the Heathers â I mean, the Plastics (McAdams, Chabert, and Seyfried) â glom onto her.
The result is weirdly schizophrenic in tone; at times it seems like it wants to be a modern-day version of "Heathers" (which was written by Waterss brother, Daniel) and at other times, it seems content to be just another John Hughes knockoff.
I first heard Mean Girls described as Heathers without the killing.
With Tragedy Girls, director/co-writer Tyler MacIntyre has enough courage to focus on characters who aren't perfectly likable or admirable (it's reminiscent of Heathers in that way), using their friendship -- and their struggles to maintain that friendship -- as an anchor.
This deft touch can even paper over the film’s narrative shortcomings as an amusing idea that’s never fleshed out with the wit or momentum needed to achieve its true end goal of being the Second Coming of Heathers .
It was as if they’d seen “Heathers” and “I Know What You Did Last Summer” and “Scream” and “Scary Movie” and a dozen other self-referential hipster-slasher-clever films, and they were “owning it” and not acting it.
Here, they are teamed as deadly high school divas in a cynical, colourful exercise in satirical slasherdom, which harks back to such tart confections as Heathers, Scream and Election.
Fashionable, gorgeous and fearlessly attuned to what they want, these girls always look cool, whether they’re cheerleading, casually strolling their twitter feeds, or hacking through a corpse, and the film’s snazzy slang and edgy aesthetic calls to mind killer teen movies of the past, from Heathers, to Scream, to Jennifer’s Body, but falls just shy of matching their greatness.
Their rapport is so easy and authentic, that impossibly clever, rapid-fire slang that cannot fail to bring to mind such all-timers as Heathers and Jennifer’s Body .
Not since Heathers has a such a quirky, funny, wholly original, yet horrifyingly relatable tragicomic romance summed up the experience of many contemporary teens.
Spontaneous is reminiscent of Heathers, particularly when it comes to the trenchant mirth and social satire carefully embedded into the script.
Duffield’s writing shines when matched with Langford’s whimsical glow, and together they have created a bloodier Heathers for the modern age.
If you asked me to name the three best dark cult teen classics of the last 30+ years, I’d start with “Heathers” (1988), then go with “Donnie Darko” (2001) — and I can’t think of a more worthy contender to complete the list than “Spontaneous,” a diamond-sharp gem that plays like a 21st century take on a John Hughes high school romance butting heads with Brian De Palma’s “Carrie.”
Spontaneous starts off as the best teen-centered dark comedy since Heathers , then evolves into something unexpectedly profound.
She’s channeling her inner Heathers meets Beetlejuice era Winona Ryder, no easy task if you ask me.
If "Heathers" and " Jennifer's Body " decided to conceive at a woodsy kegger, "All Cheerleaders Die" would be the offspring.
Now the filmmakers have reunited with a savvy reimagining not only of their earlier no-budget collaboration, but also of the whole female-empowerment teen horror subgenre as represented by Heathers (1988), Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1992), The Craft (1996), Teeth (2007) and Jennifer’s Body (2009).
But in the 12 years between, McKee and Sivertson haven’t done much to refine the concept, which attempts to combine the dark high-school comedy of Heathers with a calamitous fusion of witchcraft and zombie tropes.
Reminiscent of Heathers , Mean Girls and a whole host of bitchy high school primed cinema, Cheerleaders is not as funny or thrilling as it should be, belching out moments of delight here and there, but never quite finding a successful balance of either.
There are passing nods to Carrie and Heathers here, but the overall sunny tone is more Buffy The Vampire Slayer .
The script has a Heathers sense of humour about adolescence.
"Body" aims for the knowing, tongue-in-cheek horror of the "Scream" series, and also for the pitch-black teen comedy of "Heathers."
Her sense of wordplay owes a clear debt to Heathers, but without that film’s satirical feel for the absurd.
Jennifer’s Body reminds me of the 1988 Heathers, taking high school conventions and flipping them on their wild, murderous side, all while the cool kids talk the talk.
At this point, Cody and director Karyn Kusama go all proto-feminist Heathers by way of a horror film on the material.
Stripped of these underlying psychological inferences and judged on its own cinematic merits, the film is more uneven, not quite as sharply satirical or groundbreaking as its past brethren, 1989's "Heathers" and 2004's " Mean Girls ."
A new Heathers proves elusive.
There is some initial comparison to another teen angst film, "Heathers" (1989), but where the older film, especially the violence, was fantasy based, the comic book-inspired tale is firmly rooted in teen reality.
The blockbuster success of The Breakfast Club was due more to its powerful anti-exclusionary message than it was to the presence of a memorable story (there wasn't one) or its negligible comedic elements, and the murderous antihero of Heathers would have gleefully exterminated the cheerleaders of Bring It On.
This film combines the outrageous originality of Chuck & Buck, the quirky humor of Rushmore and the cheeky satire of Heathers.
As for the obvious Tim Burton flair of the film (including the house and neighborhood exteriors), it's in large part because of how much Lisa reminds one of Ryder's characters in Beetlejuice and Heathers, with McLaughlin adding, “Winona Ryder is a huge influence for me in that period, and we were absolutely inspired by her costumes in Beetlejuice and Heathers.
The film's combination of shocks and laughs works to an extent, in the vein of Heathers and Mean Girls.
The director, Marcos Siega, is trying for an arch, sardonic tone of the sort that sustained classically mordant accounts of teen perfidy such as "Heathers" or "Cruel Intentions," but it's really beyond his grasp, and sophisticated dialogue is beyond the grasp of screenwriter Skander Halim.
Like some sketch-comedy Frankenstein monster made from the cutting-room entrails of "Clueless," "The Opposite of Sex," "To Die For," "Election" and "Heathers," the puerile social satire "Pretty Persuasion" is stinging only insomuch as its unsophisticated wit and overwhelming smugness are painful to sit through.
Probably the three finest models of the genre, Heathers (1989), Clueless (1995) and Election (1999) -- not to mention last year's Mean Girls , which was a fairly entertaining distillation of its predecessors -- serve as examples to help explain what the new film Pretty Persuasion does wrong.
"Dinner in America" has its cinematic references points, in a continuum with eclectic iconoclastic films like "Ghost World," "Welcome to the Dollhouse," or "Heathers" (one scene in "Dinner in America" specifically references a moment in "Heathers").
Rehmeier’s Dinner in America brings to mind widely assorted influences from indie classics like Todd Solondz’s Welcome to the Dollhouse, Jared Hess’s Napoleon Dynamite , Terry Zwigoff’s Ghost World , Michael Lehmann’s Heathers , Allan Moyle’s Pump Up the Volume , Darren Stein’s Jawbreaker, Bobcat Goldthwait’s God Bless America , Jefery Levy’s S.F.W ., Jason Reitman’s Juno , Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini’s American Splendor , Sam Mendes’s American Beauty , and David Lynch’s Blue Velvet , among others.
Instead, the biting new comedy starring Camila Mendes and Maya Hawke is more closely a spiritual successor to high school movie classics like Heathers or Clueless .
As a young child and teenager, I was able to watch classics like The Breakfast Club (1985), Heathers (1988), Clueless (1995), and my personal favorite: 2004’s Mean Girls .
You can also mark the clear similarities shared with movies like Heathers and Mean Girls .
“Heathers”, “Jawbreaker”, & “Cruel Intentions” seem to set the tone for a tale that has the look and feel of “Clueless”.
Assassination Nation (2018)
Directed by Sam Levinson
influenced by Heathers (1989)
Plot Themes Dialogue
Assassination Nation channels the conceit into horror rather than comedy (though certain aspects qualify as black comedy), but Levinson’s choice to up the ante by having half of Salem get hacked transforms what starts out as a Heathers-style satire into just another variation on the Purge franchise, with our heroes threatened by mask-wearing vigilantes wielding guns and knives.
Imagine The Purge crossed with Heathers liberally dosed in more blood than Carrie and that’s a good approximation of Sam Levinson’s film, where a small American town turns on its young women for doing exactly what society has told them to do – until they fight back.
Her dry remarks could be plucked straight out of Heathers.
I thought it looked slick and trashy and very, very snarky, like Heathers but updated for a generation used to social media and school shootings.
More Sucker Punch than Heathers, Assassination Nation still manages to get a few things right, including the way a mob (online or off) can come after the innocent.
The likes of Heathers were smart enough to invent futureproof slang, but there’s a touch of Juno syndrome here.
Baby Diver is also such a curious blend of heightened comical world building and legitimate tragedy and danger that it's been easily compared to both the zany Hudson Hawk and the grimly violent Drive.
Bad Kids of Crestview Academy (2017)
Directed by Ben Browder
influenced by Heathers (1989)
Plot Themes
When you try to cross The Breakfast Club with Agatha Christie’s Ten Little Indians, there’s always some hope you’ll end up with something darkly comic like the 1988 classic Heathers .
The dark high school thriller-comedy has known countless variants, the apex perhaps being the immortal “Heathers” (1988).
Director Jason Reitman ( Thank You for Smoking ) keeps things brisk, occasionally employing cutesy visual flourishes that mostly work; it reminded me a bit of Heathers (1989), and if it doesn't get too much Oscar hype, it could be a future cult favorite.
Look to something like Heathers for how to write absurdist dialogue--that film along with Clerks the chief antecedents for Juno, which isn't as good as either because it wears its hipster cred like a chip on its shoulder.
The Man Who Sold His Skin (2021)
Directed by Kaouther Ben Hania
influenced by Heathers (1989)
Themes
Adding to that visual texture is a morbid humour, akin to Michael Lehmann's Heathers or Mary Harron's American Psycho , that undercurrents Sam's dark and twisted journey and Mahayni ensures the audience never loses affection for him.
The Edge of Seventeen (2016)
Directed by Kelly Fremon Craig
influenced by Heathers (1989)
Themes Characters
Like “Ghost World” and “Heathers,” other movies aimed at smart girls and their older sisters, Craig’s film will find its cult following as its audience catches up with it.
The Breakfast Club and Ferris Bueller's Day Off are tinged with magical realism, seen through the eyes of the teen who's got the grown-ups' number; Heathers (1988) is a very dark comedy with the trappings of a revenge thriller, and the adults are basically nowhere to be seen.
For Winona Ryder’s dweebette-by-association Veronica Sawyer, 17 is when she fell in with bullies, cliques, and much, much worse in Heathers (1988).
The Edge of Seventeen may not be embraced by John Hughes nostalgists, but Steinfeld's Nadine is a direct descendant of Molly Ringwald's Samantha in Sixteen Candles — as well as of the marginalized heroines played by Winona Ryder in Heathers , Julia Stiles in 10 Things I Hate About You , Thora Birch in Ghost World and many others.
In the pantheon of hard-R teen comedies, The Edge of Seventeen hews way closer to Heathers ’ sly subversion than the locker-room boob bonanzas of Porky ’s.
The dialogue is relentlessly fancy without being witty, and the specious moralizing of the plot looks like it was tacked on to appease square adults; the real narrative force behind this movie is nihilist camp, as in Roger Corman's 1966 The Wild Angels but without the same degree of filmmaking skill.
At worst, it suggests a 21st-century reboot of the justifiably forgotten 1994 comedy Airheads, which took a similar premise in a much less satirical direction.
2 1/2 Stars (out of 4) Tweet It Was Really Nothing By Jeffrey M. Anderson Taking a cue from Airheads (1994), wherein a heavy metal band forcibly occupied a radio station in order to get their music played, Shoplifters of the World, set in 1987, does something similar for The Smiths.
Yes, this is basically 1994 radio-station-held-hostage comedy Airheads redux, without acknowledgement, or Adam Sandler, or any sense of humor, really.
Adapted by Daniel Waters, who most notably wrote Heathers (a direct ancestor of the other Waters’s Mean Girls), the film does show flashes of biting brilliance that echo the 1988 classic, but it’s simply not as clever or jawdropping.
One can glimpse what Waters was aiming for here—a combination of the dark high-school humor his brother Daniel, who shares script credit with Mead, brought to “Heathers” (and Mark himself did to “Mean Girls”) with the elements of a supernatural action-thriller.
From the director of "Mean Girls" and the writer of "Heathers" (as the posters are quick to remind moviegoers) this latest young adult book series to come to the screen has a ludicrous mythology and complex, chatter-heavy plotline, but it is redeemed, mostly, by a zing-heavy script and a breakout lead performance from Ellen Page-esque newcomer Zoey Deutch.
Brothers Daniel and Mark Waters gave us the 1988 cult classic “Heathers,” with its contagiously quotable lines — “What’s your damage?” — but you won’t find anything so memorable here.
To be fair, nobody may be more entitled to swipe from “Mean Girls” than “Vampire Academy” director Mark Waters, who directed “Mean Girls,” and co-writer Daniel Waters, who wrote “Heathers,” to which “Mean Girls” owes a big debt.
Because it was directed by Mark Waters, who did the terrific Mean Girls , and written by his brother Daniel Waters, who did the script for the classic Heathers.