This is one of those "third rail" movies
to talk about. It's tough to say anything bad about it, because its biggest
fans can "think piece" you to death about it: Everything good about
it is intentional, and anything that doesn't work or is problematic is satire.
It's an annoyingly bulletproof movie in the way it's defended. This is my
second time watching the movie, and I have the same hesitation about it that I
did the first time. The movie and Winona Ryder's character don't reckon with
the violence in a satisfying way, and Christian Slater's satanic Romeo is too
thinly written to interest me.
This is a high school comedy classic though. It
arrived at a perfect time. It's right after John Hughes' peak, and takes the
same ideas even futher. And, it feels like Hollywood spent all of the 90s
trying to catch up to what Heathers had to say. I mean, isn't early
Tarantino (True Romance, Natural Born Killers) doing the same
thing with the violence and conflicted protagonists? You look at something like
Fight Club and wonder why it took filmmakers a decade after Heathers
to get there.
This is a pretty incredible screenplay for dialogue.
No line is wasted. The punchlines are dark and pointed. It establishes
characters efficiently. It's an enormously quotable movie, somehow making lines
like "fuck me gently with a chainsaw" sound natural and effortless.
I'd like to know why screenwriter Daniel Waters was never able to match this.
Was it that hard to find a studio with the stomach to risk it? Did he lose his
edge the further he got away from that demographic? I don't know, but Vampire
Academy is a long way from Heathers.
Verdict: Strongly Recommend
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