From Sixteen Candles to Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, John Hughes’s first four films as a director defined a generation. These films gave our parents a hollow optimism that things would be better than they were; rose-tinted glasses and all that. While many loved the work of John Hughes, some felt the hollow optimism of pretty white people getting their way, as the camera pulls out to then roll credits on the idyllic happiness that few of them would ever experience in their lives. For those Hughes haters, they had Heathers. (Though the box office numbers would say otherwise! Buh dum tiss.)

Veronica Sawyer, J.D., and the Cost of Wanting to Be Seen

Veronica Sawyer (Winona Ryder) longs to form an identity of her own, while stuck in the shadow of the Heathers: Heather Chandler (Kim Walker), Heather McNamara (Lisanne Falk), and Heather Duke (Shannen Doherty). When Veronica meets J.D. (Christian Slater), she finally gets that chance. The quick-talking, five-dollar-word-using J.D. is just the man to get this impressionable teen to step out of her comfort zone. Literally. As the bodies start piling up, the town is concerned about a potential suicide epidemic. But Veronica knows all too well that the path she’s going down could easily end up in her own death.

I had not heard of Heathers until my senior year of high school. Knowing that I was a sad loner, my physics teacher and calculus teacher (husband and wife) somewhat took me under their wing and gave me a pretty in-depth film education. They showed me Tarantino, Heathers, and tons of other wonderful films that helped form who I am today. At the time, I was awestruck by Heathers. I loved its dark humor and deeply appreciated the message of being your own person. And, surprisingly, it still holds up incredibly well in 2026.

Generational Conformity and Why Heathers Still Resonates

While there are many criticisms to be made about Gen Z/Alpha, I find that many of these same criticisms were just as valid when I was younger. When I was in middle school, skinny jeans were all the rage. That would soon transform into the Mumford and Sons hipster era of the late aughts, early 10s. But we found our individuality in our similar conformity. Whereas the Z/Alphas of today blindly accept their conformities and are slowly devolving into a formless blob of nothingness. Heathers could easily be an antidote for youngsters of today. (Sans all the killing, etc.)

To me, the whole theme of Heathers is finding healthy expressions to be yourself and stepping away from the conformity of what it means to be “cool”. Veronica has all the trappings to be her own, unique person, but gets stuck in the mundanity of being seen as cool by the cool kids. Every high school has those handful of people who SOMEHOW become the ‘it’ kids. But where are they now? In my case, most of them refused to leave my small town and are stuck in the ‘good ole days’. Huh. What a life.

Self-Awareness as a Double-Edged Sword

One of my least favorite things about John Hughes films is the lack of individuality many of the characters have. And those who are distinct individuals are still incredibly one-note. Veronica is an incredibly deep character who, initially, succeeds when she’s catalyzed to be herself by J.D. Unfortunately, J.D. has ulterior motives that Veronica doesn’t notice until it’s too late. It’s interesting to watch this film as an adult and not a barely self-aware teen. The writing is on the wall with J.D. A normal person would immediately see the red flags in J.D.’s personality, but Veronica truly feels seen for the first time and allows herself to fall down this incredibly self-destructive path. It’s almost as if writer Daniel Waters is making a statement that being too self-aware is just as harmful a drug as implicit conformity.

The Mask and the Mirror in Heathers

There is more than just “conformity bad” to this film. Director Michael Lehmann brings layers of commentary to a film that could have easily fallen victim to ideas that would have been too grand for a lesser director. One of the greatest visual elements of this film is a small moment after the death of Heather Chandler. Feeling conflicted about using the trust between her and Heather Chandler, Veronica has a moment of self-realization that she doesn’t even know who she is anymore. This is visualized by a mask that hangs from Heather Chandler’s mirror.

In this moment, Veronica is sitting with her back to the mirror. Her face is tilted to the left, ever so slightly, while she looks at J.D. The mask that hangs on the mirror is perfectly hanging over the back of her head. She feels two-faced. How could she have just helped kill her best friend? Does she even know who she is anymore? Just how far will she take this? This single moment visually shows more of Veronica’s struggle than John Hughes did in the entirety of his collective works.

Why Heathers Still Holds Up Today

Again, sans the killing, Heathers is a film that still holds up incredibly well (and minus four uses of the f-slur). The jokes land, the commentary lands, and the satisfaction of some awful people’s deaths still lands. If there’s one thing right about J.D.’s ideas, it’s that “society degrades us.” Hell, I spent half a paragraph degrading Gen Z/Alpha. Much of this boils down to kids not being allowed to be kids anymore. But that’s a conversation for another day. All I can think to say at this point is, “Teenage suicide…don’t do it!”

As The Strangers: Chapter 3 reached its midpoint, tears pricked at my cheeks in that dimly lit theatre. Not from any considerable stir of emotion for our heroine Maya, or The Strangers themselves. They were wet because I had yawned a little too hard, and my eyes were dry from their usual screen fatigue. It’s genuinely a tragic occurrence when a film doesn’t manage to make you feel anything, and tonight tragedy has struck in an AMC Theatre. For myself, and for the audience of 8 that left in silence with me.

The Strangers: Chapter 3 Can Be a Standalone Film

For those who need a refresher, we pick up where The Strangers: Chapter 2 left off. The remaining two Strangers are still stalking Maya. The Sheriff is still creepy. The town is still in on it. Our protagonist walks or is kidnapped from scene to scene until the 1 hour and 30-some minute mark where she walks right out of the film.

A reader will have to twist my arm particularly hard to get me to see the point in setting the scene for this film. I often do this in my other reviews as a courtesy, but in a shocking turn of events, I don’t think you need to have even seen the first or second film to watch Chapter 3. What’s been concocted is a film made in a lab to be caught on TV when you’re too tired to change the channel and too indecisive to do anything else. The script and the cinematography for this film were poured out of a high-yield industrial barrel and chemically synthesized solely to replay on FX in a few months.

The Strangers Origin Story Continues and You Still Learn Nothing

None of this is to be catty for cattiness-sake, I just genuinely can’t figure out another reason to put together the pieces in this particular configuration. In a trilogy meant to reveal everything about its killers, there’s still little certainty as to what made them. The flashbacks imply they were just born wrong and built stupid, but then the set dressing implies that maybe religious upbringings made them evil. Or is it physical and mental abuse? Or maybe this is all just a long winded and very badly set up metaphor for how corrupt law enforcement makes monsters. Maybe it’s all four, maybe it’s none, and frankly, I’m unsure anyone can muster any interest to figure it out.

The film eeks out some lines about love and darkness and how serene being a serial killer is to our villains, but it’s all a cliché soup of edginess that emo bands of the 2000s mastered communicating twenty years ago. They imply ritualistic tendencies for them without actually setting up the time to understand why they do the ritual outside of reliving the same tired killings over and over. Which is rich coming from this movie since it opens with that same tired definition of a serial killer, teasing it might have anything to say about the concept, but ultimately just vaguely caveman grunting the phrase “sociopaths, pretty crazy right?”.

We don’t get to the heart of why they do anything, simply cutting at the surface with a dull blade rather than figuring out the “why” of what’s happening. As a matter of fact, why does anything happen here? And with the amount of times I asked why anything was happening in this film, I felt like a Jadakiss single by the time we reached the third act.

None of the Cast Gets to Shine in A Film This Dull

Madelaine Petsch seems to have reached the end of her rope with the listless and witless script she’s reading off, playing every reaction she has as either deadpan neutral or mildly scared. Richard Brake gets more screentime, and it’s lovely to see him as always, but even he can’t fix the material he’s given. Really, there’s not a single cast member who gets to shine because they’re all weighed down by the incredibly dull and meandering script.

While the lighting and color grading certainly improved, every other technical aspect of the film is being drowned in a shallow puddle. There’s not a lick of creative camerawork, and the sound mixing feels designed to blow an eardrum out as it hammers you with loud, truly obnoxious jump scares. The kills are executed terribly and practically censored by the jumbled-up editing on tap. And of course, the effects look atrociously amateurish for a film with a $7 million plus budget; you get plenty of greasy CGI blood and a particularly comedic PS2 era-looking eyeball, and that’s about it. The closest thing to enjoyment I could find was in the film’s absurd needle drops that must have put a dent in the budget the size of a small town. Substance is out today, and style is on its mandated 20-minute lunch break.

The Strangers: Chapter 3 Is Apathy Incarnate

If Chapter 2 lacked the heart it took to become a cult classic, The Strangers: Chapter 3 is hollowed out completely by its apathetic composition to be anything worth watching. The only dread inducing idea this movie conjures is an entirely real-life scenario that has nothing to do with the events of this film. It conjures the notion that some poor sap couple gets stuck seeing this film this Valentine’s Day because of the romance hinted at in the marketing.

Steer clear of the town of Venus and The Strangers: Chapter 3, intrepid couples.