Life in high school can feel like an everyday battle from which only the fittest come out alive. With endless clique wars, peer pressure and unrealistic demands for perfection, young men and women find themselves overindulging in metaphors and hyperbole meant to encompass the intensity of their daily trials and tribulations. “My life is over” seems to be one of such phrases exclaimed by teenagers who don’t get invited to dances, who are caught making out with an unpopular kid or who fail to comply to a series of rules and standards that will stop meaning anything the second after they graduate. But they don’t know this and no other film captured this violent microcosm the same way Michael Lehmann’s “Heathers” did in 1988.

Perhaps too sinister and ahead-of-its-time for the hedonistic late 1980s, the film was a box office flop (failing to even recoup its budget) but with the advent of home media, audiences worldwide warmed up to the dark satire of Daniel Waters’ script and Winona Ryder’s subtly fierce performance as Veronica Sawyer, a “loser” who befriends her high school’s most popular girls - three spawns of pure evil all named Heather - only to realize she’s not cut out for a life where pleasure only comes from sadism. After falling for a mysterious new transfer student named J.D. (Christian Slater), Veronica finds herself becoming an accidental vengador as she and her new beau go around murdering their tormentors. “Dear Diary, my teen-angst bullshit now has a body count” she realizes in disbelief.

The film’s subversive tone is practically forgotten in the peppy off-Broadway adaptation with music, book and lyrics by Kevin Murphy and Lauren O’Keefe, which forgoes the film’s perversity, in favor of a more audience-friendly tone. It’s a “Heathers” for the “Mean Girls” generation, as the book, which is set in 1989 but feels more like a CW interpretation of the 80’s, tries to take the darkness and spin it until we have enough positive messages to take home after the show is over. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with watching a show with positive values, something which makes sense given that in the years since the movie came out, we’ve had the shootings in Columbine, Sandy Hook, Virginia Tech, not to mention a spike in the numbers of suicides provoked by bullying.

If the show had been too dark, it would’ve been deemed exploitative or morbid, yet the fact that it’s so bubbly, makes it feel inadequate as a faithful adaptation of the film. Like a high school student, the show was always going to disappoint a number of niches, so it’s best to take what it succeeds at, including its pitch perfect casting. Barrett Wilbert Weed delivers yet another knockout performance as Veronica. The actress who has been a complete scene-stealer in recent productions of “Bare” and the Fringe gem “Save the Date! A Wedding Road-Trip Musical”, is finally given the opportunity to make her mark as a leading lady and she truly shines. Her wry smile and sardonic tone (think Aubrey Plaza with a less murderous stare) make her the perfect fit to play the defector of the “Lipstick Gestapo”. In numbers like the rousing “Dead Girl Walking”, where she commands her J.D. (Ryan McCartan) to take off his undies so “I can ride you till I break you”, she unleashes a subtle sexiness lacking from Ryder’s more asexual take on the character.

Then there are the Heathers. Duke, played with vicious joy by the terrific Alice Lee, McNamara played by the sweet Elle McLemore (whose comedic timing and voice make her seem like the lovechild of Kristin Chenoweth and Sean Hayes) and the machiavellian Heather Chandler played by Jessica Keenan Wynn in a spectacular, star making performance. Wynn seems to have caught on to the show’s tonal discrepancies and was able to work this in her favor by turning Heather into a shoulder-pad-wearing, gleefully self-aware demonic creature, who - even after death - takes pleasure in the misery of others. Wynn builds her performance from homages to other teenager villains like the ones from “Jawbreaker”, “Pitch Perfect” and of course Regina George (it helps that Wynn looks a lot like Rachel McAdams and Anna Camp) which aid her in the construction of the ultimate mean girl. By the time her Heather delivers the line about chainsaws and delicate copulation, you are so bewitched by her, so enamored by her lifestyle and so willing to submit to her eternal command, that you would let her do that to you and so much more.