Review of Heathers (1989) by Benskylerhill — 03 May 2018

Heathers is a movie with high ambitions. It seeks to push comedic boundaries with its dark, insensitive humor while also serving as a social commentary on...society? The film has some great elements and ideas that it presents, but it just can't seem to find its balance between funny and thoughtful, and it can't seem to get its message across coherently.

On a purely technical level, Heathers is mediocre at best. It's clumsily edited on the basis of visuals and sound, featuring an unfitting, repetitive soundtrack and choppy camera cuts that make transitions between scenes sometimes awkward and completely butcher the climactic fight scene at the end of the film.

Winona Ryder (as usual) gives a standout performance as Veronica. She shows genuine erratic emotion in every scene, not only giving her character life on the screen but making her someone to care about. Everyone else (particularly Christian Slater as JD) gives passable performances but never really shows enough charisma to fulfill their purpose as a character.

Ultimately Heathers fails because the plot and script are such a mixed bag. When the movie goes for humor, it succeeds. The humor is dark and sometimes nonsensical, but it's very effective. I just wish there was more of it, because this a really funny movie. The plot is based on such an absolutely ridiculous concept of teenagers killing the bullies at their school to liberate the students that it should be fun! And it is fun, but only when the movie owns its humor and serves as a black comedy. The sheer fun stupidity of the premise makes it really difficult to take seriously the underlying social themes, and such serious commentary gets drowned out and obscured as a result.

In the end, Heathers is not a bad film. It has some fantastic elements of hilarity that have made it a cult classic today. But it tries to juggle all of its great ideas too quickly by taking itself too seriously when it should have gone for absurdity and it just can't hold all of it.

Story: 6.

Acting: 6.5.

Script: 8.

Visuals/Sound: 3.

Entertainment Value: 7.

OVERALL SCORE: 6.