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Movie Review Monday: Heathers

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Welcome to another edition of Movie Review Monday!

This week's movie is Heathers from 1988, which comes to us via Netflix and stars Christian Slater and Winona Ryder.

The basic premise of the classic movie is that a high school student named Veronica (Ryder) is fed up with her clique-y group of popular friends, the "Heathers", and wishes they would just go away. In comes Slater's character who has a deadly solution. It all seems like fun and games until the bodies start to pile up and the whole school is thrown into chaos. Think Mean Girls just with more guns, death, and mayhem.

The movie isn't terribly gory or violent. It is also rather cheeky and silly at times. It's a mash-up of genres for sure, a dark, comedic, thriller where Ryder is forced to deal with her problems maturely. There is a lot going on thematically but it all works. There is also cliche 80s and high school stereotypes in the movie, which is great decades apart from the time this movie came out. You have your overly dorky nerds, stupid cops, aloof parents, and dimwitted jocks. The dialogue in this movie is also pretty incredible, with zingers, one-liners, and quotables all over the place. It's a lot of fun and gives the movie its unique flavor.

My only gripe, which I totally acknowledge comes from me being in 2014 and this movie being nearly as old as I am, is that a major sequence in the film is about how the jocks are pranked and made to look like they're gay, which is apparently the worst thing in the world. It was certainly a different time back then.

I recommend this movie as a pretty solid popcorn movie you don't have to think too much about but it is certainly smarter than it looks.

You can check out Heathers streaming now on Netflix!

Thanks for stopping by!