Tripwire Reviews Heathers 4K Limited Edition

High School Can Be Murder

Tripwire’s editor-in-chief Joel Meadows reviews Heathers 4K Limited Edition out from Arrow Video…

Heathers Limited Edition 4K
Director: Michael Lehmann
Stars: Winona Ryder, Christian Slater, Shannen Doherty

Released way back in 1988, Michael Lehmann’s darkly satirical look at US high school cliques has just received a 4K limited edition from Arrow Video.

The school is effectively run by three pupils, girls all called Heather (Shannen Doherty, Lisanne Falk and Kim Walker), assisted by Veronica (Ryder). Veronica doesn’t quite feel like she fits in with her venal and cruel classmates so she falls in with mystery new kid JD (Slater). She then finds herself on a path that devolves into something more grotesque, caricatured and violent.

Heathers was Michael Lehmann’s directorial debut, and he never quite made the same impact again. The film was also released in the same year as Ryder’s appearance in Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice, and it was her performances in both of these films that made her a genuine star.

Heathers is a cleverly misanthropic teen drama with an inventive twist and some darkly evocative performances. Slater has a slow burning intensity as the figure you are first led to believe is the hero of this piece, but as time proceeds, you realise that Lehmann, with screenwriter Waters, is cleverly misdirecting here with JD. Ryder has a feisty innocence here that makes her extremely likeable while the actresses who play the three Heathers are suitably snooty, entitled and obnoxious. It’s a brilliantly acerbic and at times surreal corrective against the John Hughes teen movies that dominated US cinema in the same decade.

Waters’ script is a sharp parody of middle America and US high school, mocking its bizarre tribalism and petty rivalries. Lehmann keeps the audience engaged throughout despite the increasing outlandish turns that the plot takes.

It does look very sharp in 4K here, although with a film like this, the quality of the image is less important than the content of what is now a period piece. However, it still does add something to the original.

In terms of extras, we get Lehmann talking about his film school project which influenced Heathers, screenwriter Waters on creating the script, its chequered production history and a number of other interesting behind the scenes snippets.

Heathers prefigured the 1990s US indie movie boom, influencing later filmmakers to reject idealisation and focus on skewed naturalism. For fans of Winona Ryder in Stranger Things, it’s a must watch to see where she got her start in her career. Lehmann practically rewrote the genre here, and this remains a pivotal and even thought-provoking work.

Heathers 4K Limited Edition is out now from Arrow Films