10 Teen Movies That Are Smarter Than You Think
6. Heathers (1988)
The high school clique is a staple of the teen movie, proving difficult to enter, devastating to leave, and tapping into the exclusionary social structures most people grew up with. Michael Lehmann’s Heathers is built out of this, putting Veronica Sawyer (Winona Ryder) in with Westerburg High’s most exclusive clique, the Heathers (Duke, McNamara, and Chandler), whose only goal in life is to look good and make life hell for everyone they don’t find hot.
But behind the handbags and Peter Pan collars, a darker narrative emerges when Veronica befriends trenchcoat-wearing, motorbike-riding bad-boy Jason "JD" Dean. Fed up of the systemic ostracization practiced by the popular kids, the pair embarks on a campaign of extreme subversion. Once JD has been unleashed, though, the bodies start piling up, and Veronica has three options: join him, stop him, or die.
Today, Heathers might be read as a school shooter film, but what screenwriter Daniel Waters was tapping into at the time was a culture and class war between the social and material haves and have-nots. The picture satirises the high school clique in deadly fashion, and while JD seems to come out as the bad guy, the final scene of the movie, in which Veronica confronts Heather Duke (Shannen Doherty), points us back towards its real target.