Heathers has been a cult classic for 35 years. It’s about killing off the mean girls and bullies who make high school life a nightmare. Is it still possible to watch it without thinking of how many American kids head for school every day knowing it might be the day they die?
Heathers was praised for its dark comedy and humor. It’s lived for all these years as a cultural reference point. As a society, we’ve all kind of agreed that sexism, racism, homophobia, and transphobia in old movies be ignored as a relic of a different time. What about murder, can we overlook that?
The question seems relevant, because Heathers: The Musical is set to come out of Britain soon.

Look at the praise on this poster from the critics when the film first came out. It made stars of Winona Ryder and Christian Slater. The three oh-so-popular mean girl Heathers were played by Shannen Doherty, Lisanne Falk, and Kim Walker.
When James Dean knockoff Jason (J.D.) Dean (Christian Slater) shows up at the high school, Veronica (Winona Ryder) is immediately attracted to him. She hangs around with the Heathers, but isn’t quite as unkind as they are.

Veronica and J.D. get together, but it doesn’t take long for J.D. to start knocking off people. At first Veronica goes with the program, but soon realizes J.D. has a serious problem. When he wants to blow up the whole school, she attempts to stop him.
The film released in 1988. Before Columbine and all the horrific school shootings since then. I couldn’t help seeing a direct line from the black comedy that used humor to suggest killing off the people in school who you hated to the current situation. Outcast boys like the J.D. character in this film feel entitled to walk into a school building and start shooting an assault rifle at anyone they see.
Yes, I could still see the humor in the situation and the poetic justice of the ending, but I couldn’t stop connecting it to the modern sickness of guns and trauma. Have you watched this film recently? How did you react to it with 2023 eyes?
Heathers is available on AMC+, Prime Video, Apple TV+, Roku and several other streamers.
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