Some teen movies cover dark or sexual themes that can result in controversy or mixed reactions from viewers and critics.The film distributor of "Assassination Nation" said they knew the film was a "stick of dynamite."The teen rom-com "Sierra Burgess Is A Loser" contained plotlines and jokes that offended many viewers.A lot of movies about teenagers tend to delve into the darker side of being a teen. And although some of these portrayals are met with positive reactions, some are surrounded by a bit of controversy or mixed responses from viewers and critics alike.From "Heathers" to "Kids," here are nine of the darkest or most controversial teen movies that have been released in the past few decades.Editor's note: This post deals with topics like sexual assault and violence that could be disturbing to some readers. It also contains spoilers for the films.Many consider "Heathers" to be one of the darkest teen movies ever, but one of the proposed original endings of the film was considered to be even darker. Teenage angst comes with a body count in the 1988 pitch-black comedy "Heathers." Winona Ryder and Christian Slater star as a teenage couple who murder their popular classmates and cover it up by making their deaths look like suicides.Many viewers already felt the ending was pretty bleak (Slater's character blows himself up after his attempt to bomb the school was thwarted) but the original ending could've been different. Writer Daniel Waters told Topless Robot that the original script called for Slater's character to successfully blow up the high school and then the film would depict the deceased students at a prom in heaven.Director Michael Lehmann told Broadly that studio executives refused to make the movie unless the ending was changed. He said executives worried that "blood would be on [their] hands" if anyone attempted to emulate the film's content. "I would have liked to have seen the original ending with its full irony out there, with a darker feel and a kind of odd, perverse sense of optimism," he added.The film inspired a 2018 TV series reboot that was also met with controversial responses. The series was "indefinitely delayed" because of its bleak depiction of school violence in light of real-life, violent school tragedies that occurred around the time of the series' projected release. Despite the controversy and delay, the series was later released but re-cut, according to Entertainment Weekly. "River's Edge" was called "an exercise in despair" by film critic Roger Ebert.The 1986 movie "River's Edge" follows a group of teenagers who have mixed and delayed reactions when they discover a friend has murdered his girlfriend. Loosely based on the real-life 1981 murder of a 14-year-old girl in Milpitas, California, some felt "River's Edge" was quite dark and offered no explanations, only bleak depictions of detached and despondent teens. Film critic Roger Ebert compared the movie to the classic crime films "The Onion Field" and "In Cold Blood," but "River's Edge" was polarizing at the time of its release."Some executives from a small distribution company wouldn't look at us [after a festival screening]," one of the movie's producers Midge Sanford told Vice in 2017. "People either embraced it or were very put off by it. It didn't get picked up right away."In the years since its release, the film received generally positive reviews from critics on Rotten Tomatoes and Salon has named it the "darkest teen film of all time."The film distributor of "Assassination Nation" said they knew the film was a "stick of dynamite.""Assassination Nation" stars Suki Waterhouse, Hari Nef, and Abra as a group of suburban high school girls who find their lives turned upside down when a hacker begins sharing their town's secrets on the internet. The 2018 film divided most critics, who either hailed it as "a vicious, cathartic horror film about misogyny" or wrote it off as "a badly bungled attempt at social commentary," but the controversy surrounding the movie started before it was even released. Christian Parkes, chief marketing officer of the film's distributor, Neon, told Variety that the team was "unable to rent" billboard space to put their promotional poster on. The poster contained the words "A-- A-- In Nation." "Every single out of home vendor in Los Angeles passed," Parkes told the publication. "They thought it was a political ad calling for violence or that it was just plain offensive because it had the word 'a--' in it."Parkes also said the film's online trailers were rejected by YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram because they contained images of guns pointed directly at the camera, as well as footage of women undressing. He added: "We knew that this film was a stick of dynamite. We didn't want to dress it up into something it isn't. This isn't a feel-good coming-of-age story. It's an honest meditation on where we are as a culture."See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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