This Isn’t Just Camp — It’s Cathedral

I’m going to say something that will sound unhinged but is, in fact, academically correct: Jawbreaker should be in the Criterion Collection. So should Cruel Intentions. And Wild Things. And probably Poison Ivy and The Craft while we’re at it.

This isn’t just nostalgia. This isn’t just camp. These films are holy texts of femme-noir pop cinema — venomous, sexually chaotic, and so much smarter than we ever gave them credit for. They are not guilty pleasures. They are glittering, glossy artefacts of a very specific moment when teen movies stopped pretending to be moral and started worshipping power.

Jawbreaker: Murder, Makeup, and the Feminine Grotesque

On paper, Jawbreaker is Heathers for the late-’90s: a high-gloss, black-hearted tale of teen girl murder and social warfare. But what Darren Stein actually made was a queer fantasia of image, voice, and vengeance. It’s practically drag.

From the moment Rose McGowan’s Courtney Shayne purrs her way into frame in that lavender cardigan and cruel smirk, you know this isn’t a movie about teens. It’s about icons. The dialogue is operatic in its bitchcraft. The visuals? Colour-coded psychodrama. The voiceover alone could be dissected in a gender studies thesis.

And the act of violence—a jawbreaker forced into the throat of the birthday girl—is so on-the-nose it circles back around to brilliance. Femininity turned fatal. Candy-coated murder. It’s not just camp. It’s baroque.

Cruel Intentions: Queer, Catholic, and Carnal

There is nothing subtle about Cruel Intentions, and that’s the point. Every shot is oiled. Every line is sharpened. It’s a teenage film, sure, but it borrows the lens of high erotic thriller and softcore Euro-drama. And let’s talk about the queer subtext that is barely sub-anything. Kathryn Merteuil isn’t just a mean girl—she’s a high femme Machiavelli with a crucifix full of coke and a masterclass in weaponised repression.

Sarah Michelle Gellar’s performance is Shakespearean. Every word is double-edged. Every outfit is an act of war. And yes, Ryan Phillippe’s Sebastian is the original bisexual chaos demon—and no, you cannot change my mind. The whole film plays like a symphony of bad decisions made by people who look too good to survive.

There is nothing accidental here. This is control. This is performance. This is cinema.

Wild Things: The Swamp Gothic Sex Con

Wild Things is pure bisexual noir. Sleaze with structure. Trash with teeth.

Denise Richards and Neve Campbell licking champagne off each other wasn’t just a poster — it was the bait in a film that’s actually a triple-crossing, tightly plotted masterpiece of swampy moral rot. Kevin Bacon is naked for no reason—which is just awful and terrible. Matt Dillon is scummy but hot. And the women? They’re in charge.

It’s all a trick. A long con. A story about perception, projection, and the ways people underestimate young women — especially when they’re hot. You think it’s a sleazy late-night cable movie. Then it outsmarts you. And you love it more for that.

Why They Deserve the Criterion Treatment

Criterion, bless them, already gets this. They’ve canonised Showgirls. They’ve reclaimed Valley of the Dolls. They know that excess can be profound. That stylised doesn’t mean stupid. That art doesn’t have to whisper.

Jawbreaker, Cruel Intentions, and Wild Things aren’t side notes in cinema history. They are full-volume cultural moments. They taught a generation how to look, how to perform, how to want. They’re visually meticulous, thematically feral, and emotionally operatic. They’re also fun, which prestige often forgets is a valid cinematic mode.

And let’s be honest: if Martin Scorsese had directed Cruel Intentions, film bros would call it a masterpiece about power and performance. But because it was made for teenage girls and queer kids? It’s camp.

It is camp. But it’s also cathedral.

High femme, high drama, high impact. Put that on a spine number and call it film school.