Dir. Karyn Kusama , US , 2009, 102 mins
Cast: Megan Fox, Amanda Seyfried, Johnny Simmons, Adam Brody
Review by JAMES BARTLETT
We first meet “Needy” Leslicky (Amanda Seyfried) in a mental hospital. She's a violent prisoner, but, as she tells us, she wasn't always that way. It was her best friend Jennifer (Megan Fox) who caused all the problems; she came back a bloody-hungry monster after going off with singer Nikolai (Brody) and his band…
Much anticipated – at least by some – Jennifer's Body stars sex-bomb-of-the-moment Megan Fox and is written by Diablo Cody, the colorful character who won an Oscar for last year's surprise indie hit Juno .
The buzz was that Cody had re-invented the horror genre, but sadly, the truth falls far shorter than that. It's not that this isn't a competent teen horror movie (it is), but that Cody's dialogue - the thing that got her the Academy Award - doesn't fit in with the horror story at all.
It's a tonal problem overall really and in aiming to be a satirical/black comedy about the horrors of High School life – a more contemporary Heathers , if you will - it not only makes Jennifer's victims likeable people and Jennifer herself a nasty, vain bitch, even when she doesn't have fangs, but the sight of students crying at candle-lit vigils for dead friend is uncomfortably familiar.
There are some funny lines, but they seem so out of place and inappropriate. They're not the witty, off-the-cuff, comments you often get in horror films but seem like someone inserted dialogue from a quirky indie film by mistake and it totally jars.
Quirkiness is a fine line anyway, and here it's begging too hard to be noticed: a character has a hook for a hand, a cute little sister swears – but so what? There are plot and logic holes too; if Needy is so nerdy, how come she has a boyfriend? How come Jennifer and Needy are friends anyway? Is Needy psychic?
Director Kasuma tries hard - the audience jumps at all the right moments – but bloody gore and talking “Cody” just don't mix, as in a scene where a character is bleeding to death and Jennifer and Needy stop and talk about anorexia and being socially unpopular. It all just seems totally out of whack, though Seyfried (last seen in Mamma Mia! believe it or not) is good. It's really her character and story we follow, not Fox's, (who's anyway a little too Stepford-Wifey for me). No matter; the teenaged boys who saw the poster of her won't care.
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