Heathers
A deliciously dark coming-of-age comedy that milks maximum ironic humor from themes of teen suicide and classroom mass murder, director Michael Lehmann’s bold debut feature stars 16-year-old Winona Ryder as the high-school outcast caught between Kim Walker’s lethally spiteful mean-girl clique and Christian Slater’s homicidal bad-boy rebel. Despite a commercially lukewarm release, this misanthropic masterpiece has since established itself as an evergreen 1980s classic, inspiring a TV spin-off and hit stage musical.
Winona Ryder, Christian Slater, Shannen Doherty
- Notes From Duke JohnsonHEATHERS is one of those rare films that feels completely original while managing to perfectly encapsulate a specific place and time in our cultural history. The fully realized world within the film is both novel and specific, complete with its own language and its own set of rules. It feels a bit like going to another dimension, then looking back at ourselves and seeing things that might have otherwise gone unnoticed. Dark things. Being a teenager is a harrowing and absurd experience, and high schools are war zones. To me, it’s the greatest teen movie of all time.
