As someone who a kid and a teenager in the 1980s in many ways this does capture how the 80s were. It shows the competitive, tough love attitudes that teachers had in upper middle class school districts and how it transformed in many ways into emotional abuse. The best example is when Bridget Moretti goes to find out about getting onto the yearbook staff and the teacher's dismissive attitude with her and then the principal's refusal to deal with her disappointment. This movie also showed how teachers and administrators were so focused on the future of these students they wouldn't deal with the present. What I liked about this remake was how even handed it was towards the murder victim. It showed her relationship with her parents and her mother's grief after her daughter's death. What did drag this remake down however was the three points of view narrative. While it was nice to see the home life of the goth girl who is blamed for the death it would have been better to just show more of the home lives of the victim and the killer. But it was a decent remake despite that criticism.
