It's a deliberate subversion of its own generation and the output of teen comedies that saturated the pop culture landscape of the era," says Kayleigh Donaldson. "In those movies, everyone is obsessed with sex or grades or status but in Heathers, the endless hunt for popularity is turned into a sickly deadly game that exposes the true hollowness of high school fame. The high school of Heathers, which screenwriter Daniel Waters deliberately paralleled with the barracks in Full Metal Jacket, is a stifling hellscape that stands as a metaphor for the social brutalities of the Reagan era as well as a training ground for the smothering limitations of adult life. Everyone in that school knows that things aren't going to get any better for them, and in that twisted context, the fantasy of literally blowing everything up holds a lot of sway. Everyone does what the cool girls do and here, it's suicide. Heathers is bleak but hilariously so, and it only works in the context it created for itself. In 2018, that kind of violent fantasy isn’t a harmless pipe-dream: It’s a fear that millions of American kids live with every day that could easily become a reality.