“This is Amanda: she feels nothing. This is Lily: she feels everything.” This is teenhood in a nutshell. And this is the crawl from the trailer of Thoroughbreds, a delightfully nasty new movie in which two privileged Connecticut schoolgirls hatch a plot to kill Lily’s stepdad. They are perfect partners in crime, although the crime, inevitably, does not go perfectly. They are also perfect symbols for the two poles of teenhood and, by extension, teen movies: on the one hand, studied, borderline sociopathic numbness; on the other, an acute sensitivity that makes every experience, like, the most intense thing EVER.
Most teen movies veer towards the latter, but Thoroughbreds’ Amanda and Lily extend a fine, parallel tradition of mean, scheming, murderous movie teens. Their club could include Kate Winslet and Melanie Lynskey in Heavenly Creatures; Denise Richards and Neve Campbell in Wild Things, which took teen scheming to delectably twisted extremes; or Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ryan Phillippe in Cruel Intentions. Flipping back through the yearbook, we arrive at Heathers, which is now marking its 30th anniversary. It charted a high-school landscape of savage social hierarchies, ruled by a clique of well-heeled in-girls, brought down by Winona Ryder and the nihilistic Christian Slater. It was a shocking movie at the time, and not just for the width of the shoulder pads. This wasn’t the Rydell High of Grease, where education was something to sing and dance about. The school was a breeding ground for factionalism, elitism, conformity and cut-throat competition; perfect training for the 1980s America outside.
It is odd to look back at Heathers now, with its flip treatment of suicide, murder, rape, eating disorders and plotting to blow up the school, plus such beautifully honed lines as: “Dear diary, my teen angst bullshit has a body count.” Those were the days, when you could play fast and loose with such dark themes because they were so removed from reality. Now, US students have active shooter drills, metal detectors at the school gate and a president who is encouraging teachers to fire back. It looks like a victory for Team Nihilism. Except that in response to all this, post-Parkland, we are currently witnessing the biggest display of teen activism in living memory.
The #NeverAgain movement’s inspirational leaders are the type of people you rarely see in teen movies. They don’t fit the Breakfast Club archetypes (jock, nerd, princess, rebel, recluse). They are more like the kids that the Heathers girls snark at in the cafeteria for campaigning against famine in Africa; except now they are the coolest kids on campus. They’re feted by celebrities and featured on the covers of Time and Teen Vogue. So where does that leave mean-schemer-teen movies such as Thoroughbreds? In many ways, the #NeverAgain kids are rejecting the film’s school of nihilism: it’s the shooters who feel nothing; they choose to feel everything.
Thoroughbreds is in UK cinemas from Friday 6 April
