Personal Recommendation Hall of Fame VI

If I had known how morbid the plot of Heathers actually was, I probably would've watched it a long time ago. I was aware that it had an atypically dark tone for a teen comedy, but I wasn't quite expecting it to have a body count as well. Most of the dialogue is very cleverly written, but given how disinterested I am in standard high school drama, I was ready to turn the film off 20 minutes in. Luckily that's when events take a turn, and the story becomes far more intriguing.

I laughed out loud on a number of occasions, and I'm not quite sure why the mineral water bit landed as hard as it did, but I definitely cackled the longest at that. My engagement with the film did waver again in much of the second half, but I still appreciated how odd and unconventional the whole ordeal was. The dream sequence near the end came at just the right time, and it was so successful at recapturing my attention, that it even straightened my posture for the remaining duration of the film.

Many of the characters are just exaggerated stereotypes, but it works incredibly well for the tone and themes of the film. All the performances were exactly what they needed to be, especially for the more ridiculous minor roles. Winona Ryder is a great actress, but the perfect casting of Christian Slater had him stealing the show more often than not. Overall Heathers was a bit of a mixed bag for me, but it was still genuinely far more entertaining than I expected it to be, and will probably warrant a revisit at some point.