Heathers (1989)
Directed by Michael Lehmann
A girl who halfheartedly tries to be part of the "in crowd" of her school meets a rebel who teaches her a more devious way to play social politics: by killing the popular kids.
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5 films that influenced Heathers
What critics say influenced Heathers
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.
In the late 80s, Winona Ryder and Christian Slater did kill a bunch of their classmates, but it was in the so-so dark comedy "Heathers".
But the 1980s began with giggly sex comedies like Porky’s and Fast Times, and then John Hughes took over, imbuing high school narratives with an earnest kindness and “be yourself” messaging.
It's the opposite of The Breakfast Club, with the outsiders rising up against (rather than befriending) the prom queens and jocks, but it also has more of a sense of a school as a complete unit, a complete society, rather than sections of cliques.
If a Hughes film like The Breakfast Club is noteworthy for painstakingly finding the shared humanity and multiple dimensions that define characters from all backgrounds, Heathers stands apart for its utter cynicism towards everyone.
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Waters originally conceived the film as a project for Stanley Kubrick (a lofty goal considering that this was his first screenplay), and "Heathers" certainly exhibits the moral detachment of a Kubrick film�comparisons with "A Clockwork Orange" are not out of place.