“Hell is a teenage girl” – ‘Jennifer’s Body’ Review…

Posted on September 29, 2009 - 9:22pm by michael [caption id="attachment_58312" align="alignright" width="267" caption="By the way, this poster is more than a little midleading..."][/caption] Ok, so I have good news and bad news. The bad news is that Jennifer’s Body is a teen horror movie. The good news is that it’s one of the best teen horror movies that I’ve yet seen, at least since Scream ushered in the latest era of consistently idiotic teen horror movies. You may notice a pattern of one great horror film being followed by years and years of god-awful rip-offs, like what happened after the success of movies like Halloween and Scream, and while I certainly wouldn’t say that Jennifer’s Body is in any way a great film, it is definitely a thankful sign that its genre doesn’t have to be full of automatic failures. I will say, however, that it may have really helped matters for me that I saw the movie without knowing a single thing about it. When it started, I was assuming that it was going to be some cheap Poison Ivy clone, so when in one scene Megan Fox walks into co-star Amanda Seyfriend's house looking like a horror show and the whole movie veers off in a wildly different direction, my only option was relief. So here’s the plot in exactly 100 words – From the comforts of a mental hospital, Anita (“Needy”) tells us the story of her friendship with Jennifer, which was fine and happy “until the  killing started.” You see, not only is Jennifer the hottest girl in school, she has also developed an appetite for human flesh. And not just blood, by the way, the girl is hungry. An unfortunate experience turned her into this flesh-eating beast, and Needy is the only person who realizes that it’s the star cheerleader who is behind the grisly deaths that have been plaguing the town, so it’s up to Needy to stop her. The movie was written by Diablo Cody, who you may remember as the writer of Juno in 2007, and at first glance it seems that two movies could hardly be more different. On the other hand, however, they are both clear cautionary tales for young women. Juno’s message about the realities of teen pregnancy is a little more obvious, but all of the conflict in Jennifer’s Body springs from Jennifer’s unfortunate behavior at a rock concert as a result of her childish infatuation with the singer of the band. A lot of the rest of the movie, however, is basically like Twilight for guys. Or boys, anyway. I guess I may as well admit that I haven’t really caught on to all the hype about Megan Fox. Yeah, she’s beautiful, but so are all of those instantly forgettable actors that generally appear in teen horror movies. It’s good acting and good movies (or at least good nudity) that make actors stand out in my mind, and I can’t really say that I’ve seen her involved in much of that thus far. So naturally, it didn’t really help matters for me that she plays a wildly conceited high school girl in Jennifer’s Body, because my tolerance for girls like that generally hovers around the 3-5 second range. It should be noted, however, that she hasn’t partied her way into the tabloids or shown up in rehab. Besides, she has a tattoo of a Shakespeare quote, which tends to point to a more intelligent mindset which she should be respected for. But for me one of the best things about the movie was the music. When the band that Jennifer is obsessed with gets on stage and starts playing, they sound like some cheap cover band that might have had a chance had they started playing in the mid-90’s, when their kind of music was in style. But by the end of the film, the music is edited together with the action on screen so well that it becomes a character in itself. They don’t just throw in pop music to sell the soundtrack, they use it to enhance the whole movie. But if I can complain about one thing, it would have to be the dialogue. Some of the writing is outstanding (The singer of the band was “skinny and awful and evil, like a petrified tree…”), but it becomes too clear too soon how desperately the movie is trying to create a whole new repertoire of teenage slang. I’m curious to see if high school kids will now start ‘crossing each other out,’ or calling each other lime-green jello-o (that’s a jealousy reference, you see) because so and so’s bff morsel is saltier than yours. I always thought salty was the opposite of sweet, but Diablo Cody seems to have other plans. Personally, I agree with Needy. It’s freaktarded. But don’t let that get you down, the movie is still a lot better than it really has any right to be. Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried fit perfectly in their roles, leaving me with a much better movie-going experience than I had when I suffered through the intolerable Mamma Mia last year. J.K. Simmons also turns  in an amusing turn as the geeky but lovable high school teacher. The much anticipated kissing scene between Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried (like Fox’s emerging from the lake scene) was an enormous disappointment, I have to say, but as a whole the movie is a welcome sign that horror movies can still be good even when they have a teenage audience in mind. The Bean Meter [caption id="attachment_58321" align="aligncenter" width="303" caption="4 Beans out of 5!"][/caption]