On Friday nights, IndieWire After Dark takes a feature-length beat to honor fringe cinema in the streaming age.
First, the spoiler-free pitch for one editor’s midnight movie pick — something weird and wonderful from any age of film that deserves our memorializing.
Then, the spoiler-filled aftermath as experienced by the unwitting editor attacked by this week’s recommendation.
The Pitch: Meaner Than “Mean Girls.” Hotter Than “Heathers.” Better Than Barbenheimer.
I feel like kind of a basic bitch recommending “Jawbreaker” for After Dark. Don’t get me wrong: Darren Stein’s fiendishly messed-up mean girl movie from 1999 is absolutely worth canonizing as one of the all-time great midnight movies, and generally speaking, I’ll find — and use — any excuse to rewatch this camp masterpiece faster than Carol Kane can say, “Be nice, girls.”
But it feels borderline obvious to suggest this bonafide cult classic and ode to candy-coated cruelty, widely beloved by fans of homoerotic thrillers and broader bimbo cinema, for a column dedicated to truly fringe titles. Journalistically, it’s been covered enough (Entertainment Weekly did an oral history as recently as 2019), and at least anecdotally, it feels like a movie countless women remember seeing on broadcast TV way too young. The imperative word there, I suppose, being women.
Maybe I’ve got girlhood on the brain thanks to Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie,” but “Jawbreaker” does seem worth revisiting in a moment where we’re reevaluating the premium put on the various representations of femininity in film. How many “girl movies” overlap in the Venn diagram with “midnight movies”? That IndieWire’s Christian Zilko hasn’t seen it yet speaks volumes (reader, he’s gonna love it!), and makes me think there are enough well-meaning Film Kens out there like him to need cluing in. Plus, as far as double-features go, I’d recommend Barb-breaker — a two-film, high-femme tribute to society’s unmeetable expectations for women, cutting Mattel’s baked-in sweetness with a sour sucker punch from the ’90s — over a pairing with “Oppenheimer” any day.
Like Gerwig’s big box office success, Stein’s venomous black comedy grounds its story in one woman’s convertible-centric quest to understand her place in the world and keep power with her and her friends in their own version of Barbie Land. Rose McGowan leads as the irredeemably and delightfully awful Courtney Shane: a high school sadist in heels whose Regina George and Heather Chandler-esque reign of terror reaches its peak when a birthday-prank-gone-wrong ends in the sudden death of 17-year-old teen dream Liz (Charlotte Ayanna). Courtney’s henchmen Julie (Rebecca Gayheart) and Marcie (Julie Benz) — part of the clique formerly known as the Flawless Four, now three — go along with her plan to cover up the killing, until Judy Greer‘s mousy Fern discovers the truth and threatens to reveal their secret.
Behold one of the greatest makeover movies in cinematic history, and an artifact from a time when brands like Barbie were still encouraging women to sacrifice their souls in the pursuit of a sexist ideal. Highlights to look out for include a slew of outfits Stereotypical Barbie wishes she had in her closet; Imperial Teen’s ear-worm “Yoo-hoo” track, appearing during that legendary slow-mo hallway sequence (sequences, actually – there’s two!); and a sexy popsicle scene with a boy we’ll call Wrestling Ken. —AF
The Aftermath: Well, It’s No Horses
When I passed the IndieWire After Dark baton back to Alison Foreman to select this week’s movie, I only had one request: Please, for the love of God, pick something about horses.
But despite the hundreds of cool equine GIFs I emailed her between the hours of 3 and 5 a.m. on Thursday, my writing partner and resident Film Barbie let me down. When I sat down in Christian Zilko’s Mojo Dojo Cinema Movie Theater to watch “Jawbreaker” — my couch is leather, even if my fridge is tragically normal-sized — I was already in a sour mood.
Fortunately, my dashed hopes for a perfectly patriarchal movie night gave way to something that might be even radder. Film Kens everywhere, believe me when I say that “Jawbreaker” rules.
It’s hard to imagine a scenario where a movie will ever lose my interest after showing a candy-centric murder within the first five minutes. I appreciate that the eponymous jawbreaker incident is treated so matter-of-factly that Stein can immediately shoehorn us into the cover-up without dwelling on the lethal logistics. This film is so tightly structured that if I could bring Aristotle back from the dead and show him one movie about teenage girls, this would almost certainly be my pick.
“Jawbreaker” is the kind of movie that could have gone off the rails very quickly in less skillful hands. But like “Barbie,” it was saved by its unwavering commitment to a distinct aesthetic. Everything from the Skittles-tinged color palette to the weirdly blunt dialogue (“let’s do a little kink” should become the mandatory phrasing for any couple looking to spice up their sex lives, if you ask me) and detached-yet-intelligent discussions of high school politics worked together to keep me immersed.
I think the suggestion for a Barb-breaker double feature is a good one, but someone has to be bold enough to say what we’re all really thinking: what about Jaw-ppenheimer? Both “Jawbreaker” and Christopher Nolan’s WWII masterpiece deal with protagonists who use spherical items to unleash evil into the world, then reckon with the consequences of their actions. Cillian Murphy’s J. Robert Oppenheimer and Rose McGowan’s Courtney are both characters capable of charming and alienating peers in equal measure. They both manage their reputations by courting the affection of their cult-like admirers before ultimately being brought down by their biggest haters.
July 2023 was a month for double features about the expectations of femininity and the tortured minds who create our nightmares. But maybe August 2023 is a month for returning to brevity. Another Barbenheimer double feature will eat up your whole Saturday, but you can cover both themes in 86 minutes of “Jawbreaker.” —CZ
Those brave enough to join in on the fun can rent “Jawbreaker” on Prime Video, Apple TV, YouTube, and Google Play.IndieWire After Dark publishes midnight movie recommendations at 11:59pm ET every Friday. Read more of our deranged suggestions…
- It’s Time to Revisit Arnold Schwarzenegger Nearly Giving Birth Through His Ass in ‘Junior‘
- ‘Entertainment’ Built a Greek Tragedy Around a Phlegm-Spewing, Hairspray-Coated Anti-Comic
- ‘The Perfection’ Is a Gayer, Gorier, Goofier ‘TÁR’ — and Fringe Netflix at Its Finest
