Classic Review: Heathers (1989)

Heathers has gained notoriety for being the rare teen film to directly engage with some of the morbid fantasies that teenagers can fall prey to. It considers the apathy which which adolescents respond to suicide, and the ecstasy that they feel as they imagine committing murder, an act that gives them a measure of power that they usually aren’t afforded. It isn’t that shocking to see the poorly treated outsiders engaging in class warfare by actually killing people, but it is disturbing to notice all of the ways in which people use suicide to prop up their own reputations. This doesn’t manage to keep up the tone of uneasy hysteria that is established in the film’s mid-section, and the ending feels like too much of a departure from what we had already seen. It isn’t consistent enough to be as sharp and biting as it could be, but it is still a good deal more observant than the likes of Weird Science. 

Like a John Hughes film, Heathers settles in on an unbelievably pretty girl who feels like a social outcast and seeks social security by aligning herself with the members of a popular clique, known as the Heathers. She’s Veronica Sawyer (Ryder) and she secretly resents her so-called friends. Outsider J.D. (Slater) notices her discontentedness and decides to help her out by murdering Heather Chandler (Kim Walker). She had thought that he was just going to knock her out, and is subsequently horrified by the way that her schoolmates respond to the news of Chandler’s death. J.D. staged Chandler’s murder to look like a suicide and everybody who had hated her when she was alive, comes to treat her like a martyr. Even with Chandler dead, Veronica is still irritated by the behavior of her classmates and J.D.’s murderous rampage continues. Veronica begins to gain a new perspective as she realizes that J.D. is a psychopath and not a romantic hero. 

The most stunning passages of the film feature Veronica writing out her diary entries and expressing all of the angst that she tries to repress. Some of her anger towards the Heathers and the social hierarchy at her school is justified, but she hasn’t yet gained the ability to rein her emotions in and assess a situation calmly. Her furious diatribes will quickly spiral out of control and she is never able to put her finger on what her ideal world would look like. She claims that she just wants everybody to be nice, and yet her conception of a high school in which everybody performs acts of kindness, seems too vague. As with other teenagers, she is somebody who thrives on drama, and even though she claims to hate the popular girls, she gets a thrill out of mocking them. She’s one of those kids who wants to have it both ways. Her hunger for acceptance and power causes her to align herself with popular girls, but she also wants to pretend that she’s not nearly as bad as them. Ryder’s coquettish, disconsolate presence is a perfect fit for a character who never owns up to the fact that she is complicit in being a school bully and, eventually, being a mass murderer. When the focus is on Veronica’s interior world and her conflicted viewpoint, the satire hits hardest. 

Heathers also provides a delicious send-up of the Tangerine Dream scores that dominated mainstream filmmaking in the 1980s. David Newman’s compositions firmly plant the film in 1989 and remind one of the crime shows of the era. This choice was clearly intentional, as the sinister tone of the score doesn’t jibe with the Melrose Place-esque visuals. In almost every scene, the visuals root this story in the candy-colored, soft-focus world of music videos. There is a cut from Chandler’s dead body to Veronica sitting on her bed, musing about how this will affect her reputation, and the same stylization is applied to both shots. Even corpses are prettified and drenched in the haze and colorful lighting that defined the 1980s. This helps us to ease into Veronica’s worldview and understand the fact that her guilt over being a murderess becomes a minor annoyance to her. In not creating a dramatic contrast between Veronica’s supposedly safe, normal life at home, and her life as a killer, the film makes a more disturbing statement on her disaffectedness. Rather than being one of those dated relics of the 1980s, which tried to promote the cringeworthy fashions of the day, this film is in on the joke and refreshingly ahead of its time. 

Daniel Waters’s script sets such a specific, unsettling tone, and sustains it for such a long time, that you can’t help but feel disappointment when Veronica sorts out all of her mixed up emotions and turns against her accomplice. The third act becomes far more action-heavy and loses the subtlety that had previously been so effective. It feels like somebody lost their nerve or simply couldn’t figure out how to wrap up a story that had managed to continually raise the stakes. Where do you go after depicting the murders of multiple teenagers, by a girl who was supposed to be their friend? In Waters’s case, he returned to the well of moralizing and quelling our fears about teenagers having no conscience or sense of morality. 

So maybe Heathers isn’t as bleak as it should be, and maybe it doesn’t fully live up to the promise established by a couple of its scenes. These are both valid complaints to have and for those who are aggravated by films that would be brilliant if just a couple of tweaks were made, this will be torturous to watch.

Personally, it was a fun ride, enjoying the pleasures of seeing a film that is as misanthropic and anxiety-ridden as most teenagers. 

still courtesy of New World Pictures

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Zita Short

I am passionate about screwball comedies from the 1930s and certain actresses from the Golden Age of Hollywood. I’ll aim to review new Netflix releases and write features, so expect a lot of romantic comedies and cult favourites.