The most shocking thing about 'Heathers' is how well it holds up, 30 years later

Hannah Yasharoff | USA TODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption 'Heathers' makers recall cult classic on 30th anniversary The director and a star of "Heathers" recall the response to the high-school movie on its 1989 release. The dark comedy is marking its 30th anniversary.

The premise alone seems unthinkable now: "Heathers," the 1989 cult classic about high schoolers who plot to kill the cool kids, is riddled with teenage suicide and gun violence as schools across the nation face those issues for real in horrifying numbers.

But it's clear there's still an appetite for the twisted comedy starring Winona Ryder and Christian Slater, which turns 30 on March 31. "Heathers" has spawned a musical, an aborted television reboot and a “Riverdale” episode in recent years, despite the wildly contentious source material.

Is it even possible to laugh at the outrageously dark humor in an era when teenagers killing themselves and each other is more unfortunate reality than preposterous premise? Surprisingly, yes.

“Heathers” opens with a scene well suited to Generation Z’s famously quirky, off-putting sense of humor. Three popular, wealthy girls – all named Heather – don big hair and '80s shoulder pads as they play a croquet match with "Que Sera, Sera" playing in the background.

There’s a strange sense of foreboding. And just as the music swells, we realize why: The girls are aiming their croquet balls at their friend, Veronica Sawyer (Ryder), whose entire body is buried in the middle of the yard in some sort of cynical hazing.

The whole scene is super weird. It also fits in perfectly with current high schoolers' borderline nihilistic sensibilities: If the rest of the world is a mess, why should our jokes make sense? We might as well just laugh through the pain.

No cultural relic, of course, goes unscrutinized in an age when the intent and impact of everything is called into question. A slew of radio stations this past holiday season refused to play “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” after some argued it was insensitive in the #MeToo era. Netflix's "Insatiable," about a beauty queen who seeks revenge on everyone who was mean to her before she lost weight, was widely criticized for fat-shaming. Even a scrapped 2018 television reboot of “Heathers” was dubbed a "repugnant, mean-spirited attempt at satire that uses smug wokeness as a hall pass to play into every offensive stereotype imaginable."

Intent is the key to being able to laugh at uncomfortable humor. The original "Heathers” has a real purpose to its edginess. Re-watching the film makes it abundantly clear that this dark and obviously satirical tone is meant to expose the worst of humanity, rather than to make light of sensitive topics or tackle them for the sake of being controversial.

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After Veronica and her outsider boyfriend J.D. kill their first Heather, Veronica laments how she'll "have to send my SAT scores to San Quentin instead of Stanford." It's a tongue-in-cheek comment on privilege in higher education that feels especially poignant amid the recent college admissions scandal.

A mean, dumb jock is killed and made to appear as though he died by suicide while struggling with his sexuality. At the funeral, the boy's father ridiculously cries "I love my dead gay son!" It's meant to make you laugh, yes, but it's also as a serious comment on how parents should accept their children.

The cafeteria is systematically broken down into cheerleaders, jocks, freaks and geeks in the eternal high-school hierarchy you've seen in everything from "The Breakfast Club" to "Mean Girls." The movie's predictable layout reminds viewers that, at its very core, "Heathers" is a social commentary about teenagers, not a haphazard grab bag of unnecessarily shocking scenes.

Adult characters offer well-meaning but incredibly tone-deaf advice. Teenage boys make terribly insensitive sexual remarks. Guns are used to permanently silence enemies.

The shock value of these abrupt, horrifying scenes becomes funny in the most cynical way. They toe the line between absurdism and truth so flawlessly, all you can do is laugh.

Dark humor is complicated and upsetting if done wrong. But in the case of "Heathers," it sparked further thought and discussion about the complicated issues and adversity teenagers face. And that's undoubtedly something kids today have a huge appetite for.

At one point, Veronica complains that she "picked the wrong time to be a human being," but human beings weren't much different before 1989, and they haven't changed much since. And that's why "Heathers" still works: The movie understands how teenagers are grasping to understand the world around them.

The subject matter makes "Heathers" a tough film to place in 2019. But for all the controversy and sensitive subjects, it still holds up surprisingly well. How very.