Heathers (2018)

It is thrilling, with wit as gentle as a chainsaw. The network has toned down the finale by cutting the prom-bombing climax, and replacing it with nothing much. The show fizzles in the home stretch, but it is easy to imagine a showrunner’s cut of “Heathers” that fills it out as a pop-surrealist masterpiece. ... The show is painfully sharp in its portrayal of the way grief is performed on social media and I.R.L. It is similarly brutal in its lampooning of national deformities.

To be sure, there are interesting ideas floating around in Heathers but surely too many at once.

Provocative idea. ... But with plastic characters and off-brand nastiness, neo-Heathers is an inadvertent MAGA fever dream, so cynical about identity politics that it forgets to give anyone an identity. [9 Mar 2018, p.51]

Tiresome nasty camp cartoon homage to 1989's pitch-black cult comedy. [5 Mar - 18 Mar 2018, p.13]

Paramount Network's TV take on Heathers is a one-note disappointment, taking certain surface-level detours from the movie and adding precious little scathing insight of its own.

Though the show's commentary on identity politics is meant to be sardonic, it's unclear for whom the jokes are meant. Heathers is ostensibly being pitched to young people, but it seems to despise the very demographic it's trying to attract. All of the teenagers are depicted as sociopaths, social climbers, or disingenuous activists.

Heathers is hardly the first 30-year-old movie to receive a modern reboot, but it's hard to think of a more misguided re-conception, one that has updated the premise -- in a clumsy attempt to be provocative -- in wholly muddled and off-putting ways.