Country:
USA
Recognizable Faces:
Megan Fox
Amanda Seyfried
Adam Brody
Directed By:
Karyn Kusama
This is another of those compromise viewing, where no one can find a movie that everybody likes, so we settle for a movie that will make us laugh instead. In that respect, Jennifer's Body got the job done. That's about the only thing it got right. Believe it or not, that movie, doomed by its very name, has been written by Diablo Cody. The same Diablo Cody that wrote Juno, that cutie-pie movie of self-exploration and early pregnancy on a soundtrack of bad indie bands. The best word I can use to describe Jennifer's Body is Foxploitation. There is nothing that makes sense in this movie, except the desire to make some money off Megan Fox's sex symbol status and other teenage fads like emo and occult. It's a movie that's been written on a napkin, during lunch hour and it thinks you're stupid.
It goes like this. Jennifer (Fox) is the hottest chick in Devil's Kettle, a small town at the deep end of...nowhere? Her best friend Needy (Seyfried) is somewhat of a dork, but since Jennifer and her are having a mad case of "sandbox love" as she refers to, she can survive the daily grind of high school. One night, Jennifer gets into that little mind of hers to go bang the singer of Low Shoulder (Adam Brody), a struggling emo band that happens to be stopping in their local redneck bar. What she doesn't know is that they have recently turned to Satan in order to get a quick launch into stardom, so they can be "famous like Maroon 5". Unfortunately for them, they are a little slow. So for their virgin sacrifice ritual, they pick the sluttiest looking girl in the room. And when you pick a non-virgin for a virgin sacrifice (Jennifer hilariously says she's "not even a backdoor virgin anymore") , you create a succubus. As Low Shoulder skyrocket into superstardom (Satan is an efficient rock manager), Needy is left alone to stop her voracious friend from eating all the boys in her school.
There seems to be two schools of horror movies. One that seems genuinely preoccupied about finding the sources of dread and fear in human consciousness and another one who relies on the fact that "things are known to be scary" so they scare people. Because they are told to be scared about it. Jennifer's Body seems to be finding a niche in between both. Sigmund Freud threw a nice idea in the air, about the nature of "scary" back in the days. That it's the "uncanny", what used to be familiar, but now peeks into the unknown that scares you. It plays with your sense of security. With more effort from Diablo Cody and Karyn Kusama, this could have been a little suckerpuncher of a movie. But it's way too centered around pseudo-erotic images of Megan Fox's body to work. I know it's supposed to be the whole concept, but it's done with such a contemptuous stance that it's not even slightly arousing. Think of it as half-way into well shot porno and an MTV video.
So what is there to learn from Jennifer's Body? That you shouldn't get in a van with strangers, no matter how sexy they might be? No. I'm sure a lot of young girls would get a kick from being an all-powerful monster that oozes self-confidence. That pre-martial lust leads you to your demise? That would make sense, since it's kind of what Juno is about (without the deaths and the gore). I don't know what's up with Diablo Cody and lustful little girls, but she's a clear advocate for neutering teenage desires. She does it in a rather spectacular way with Jennifer's Body, there are a few gruesome scenes and belly laughters, but it lacks the sophistication and the overall reflexion of Juno. And yes, horror can be a smart genre if you only apply yourself a little bit. Jennifer's Body is original and tries to say something. It's also shoddy in its execution and has questionable motives. It will end up collecting dust on a pile of quickly produced movies that have been sold to kids as an alternative to paint sniffing for burning a few brain cells.
SCORE: 47%
