Heathers

This weekend, while browsing Youtube, I discovered that someone has posted the movie "Heathers" in 12 parts. I had been wanting to see this movie since I heard about it probably years ago on VH1's "I Love the 80s". Given that it was a Sunday on a three-day weekend, I thought, "Why not?" I loaded the first part of the twelve and started watching.

I was completely enthralled from beginning to end, despite the grainy, 80s film and the bizarre, morbid events that happened every ten minutes. The basic plot of the movie is that there is a girl named Veronica Sawyer and she basically abandoned her other friends to be with the Heathers, the late 80s "Mean Girls" of Westerberg High School. She meets a new guy at school named JD and he's a little... off. Within the first twenty minutes, JD pulls a gun out of his pocket and shoots blanks at two guys giving him a hard time in the cafeteria. But this doesn't faze Veronica (or the Heathers, to be honest). Apparently, pretending to shoot someone with a real gun was sexy in the 80s. Now, they'd just be derranged.

But as events in the movie progress, there are real deaths that are passed off as suicides until Veronica decides she's had enough. She's not getting what she wants out of the deaths of these people, she just feels horribly guilty. But JD can't get enough of these murderous thrills. The movie is intense because it keeps you wondering who's going to die next. It's a murder mystery that isn't really a mystery at all. You know who did it but no one besides the two main characters know. It's like your own little movie-long secret.

The climax of the movie is as intense as it is surprising. All I can say is that this movie would never be made these days. With fake school shootings, teenagers committing mass murder, suicide scandals, raging language and bombings, "Heathers" crosses boundary after boundary until you feel like you are watching something utterly taboo. It's a rollercoaster ride of murder, suspense and twists and turns.

What I really liked about this movie, though, is that despite all the morbidity and copious amounts of death, there was no real gore. Even in the climax of the movie, there is minimal amounts of blood and gross things you would find in movies nowadays. This is probably one of the reasons that a movie as sick and twisted as "Heathers" found a place on my favorites movies of all time.


Here's a trailer. It's a really weird trailer. I'd Google another one if I were you.