This year heralded the 30th anniversary of cult favourite teen satire Heathers, an event which begs the question: what’s the 21st-century equivalent of that vicious evisceration of teen angst, high school hierarchies, and adolescent popularity contests presided over by mean girls? It’s not like teenage life has gotten easier. That’s where Assassination Nation comes in.
And thank Winona it did, because that Heathers TV show was quite the shambles. Assassination Nation, meanwhile, appears to be a more suitable inheritor of the jet black satire crown. Here it’s not the conservative, bullying culture of eighties school halls under the microscope: its the way that social media has opened us all up to an even-less-sophisticated, exponentially more brutal and unaccountable form of abuse.
Here’s the official synopsis
High school senior Lily and her group of friends live in a haze of texts, posts, selfies and chats just like the rest of the world. So, when an anonymous hacker starts posting details from the private lives of everyone in their small town, the result is absolute madness leaving Lily and her friends questioning whether they’ll live through the night.
Winona Ryder and Christina Slater’s teen angst had a body count, but that doesn’t appear to even touch the widespread chaos of this Purge–like black teen comedy. The sharp left-turn this trailer takes from typical teen comedy to something a lot darker suggests a mix of John Hughes and Black Mirror; or perhaps, if you’ve got taste and the persistence to navigate Netflix’s algorithm, an American Vandal which plays its premise semi-straight.
Written and directed by Another Happy Day‘s Sam Levinson, Assassination Nation stars Odessa Young, The Bad Batch‘s Suki Waterhouse, Community star Joel McHale, Bill Skarsgård and The Babysitter‘s Bella Thorne. Which is not a bad line-up, all told.
Assassination Nation will have its UK premiere at next month’s London Film Festival, before receiving a wide release on 23 November 2018.
