Heathers

Well here’s one I regret not having seen earlier. A funny but savage satire of popular-kid culture and 80s high school films, released right when John Hughes movies were very much in vogue.

There’s something pleasingly oddball about it all. The writing, the plot and the direction never quite do what you think they are going to. Everything is a surprise, but played completely straight. It’s always got you doing a double-take.

It’s perhaps set in a parallel universe. You think you’re in a high-school comedy but then Christian Slater pulls a gun on two jocks and shoots them with blanks. Shortly after he helps Winona murder one of the popular girls and rather than unravelling they sort of get a taste for it and carry on killing people.

A glorious mess of a film that in its own messed up way simply asks people not to be dickheads to each other. Perhaps a message for our times more than ever.