Heathers (1989) — The Pseudo-Rom Com That Conflates Love & Violence

At a time when we’ve been confronted with the everyday reality of violence, growing steadily at an exponential pace, my rewatch of the 1989 Dark Comedy Heathers struck a different chord than it did the first time I watched it.

Back then I was as a freshman in college.

At the time, the social commentary didn’t quite seep into my consciousness as much as its cool factor — a blend of high school tropes, melding into a highly volatile mix of personal values and egoism.

I knew it was dark.

But I didn’t read between the lines beyond that. I know, total reading comp fail.

But watching it again I realize there’s so much to unpack — From the way it anticipates a wave of sporadic gun violence on a mass scale, depicts both teens and adults mindlessly treating suicide and death as a currency for entertainment (enter: Social Media), and vocalizes the angsty struggles of teens in finding self-acceptance in ways that are undeniably hilarious yet unmistakably sad at the same time.

It’s a timelessly relevant social critique that amplifies many of the things we’ve gotten wrong as a society, and the mistakes we keep making.