Don't allow the fact that Michael Lehmann directed Hudson Hawk put you off his stunning debut - a prime cult movie about an all-girl high-school clique that terrorises fellow students. Their actions prompt Winona Ryder and Christian Slater (firing on all cylinders like a young Jack Nicholson) to engineer a rash of deaths to break the clique's hold on their schoolmates who are a clueless bunch of college "Swatch Dogs" and "Diet Coke Heads". Beneath the hip, lip-glossed surface of this devastatingly witty black comedy lurks a serious satire on peer-group pretensions and other teen movies. But the message never gets in the way of the snappy dialogue or on-target jabs at the in-crowd lunacy of high-school life.

A girl who halfheartedly tries to be part of the "in crowd" of her school meets a rebel who teaches her a more devious way to play social politics: by killing the popular kids.