Title: Jennifer’s Body
Starring: Megan Fox, Amanda Seyfried, Adam Brody
Plot: After a local gig ends in disaster, best friends Needy and Jennifer drift further apart as local boys start to disappear. Needy must discover Jennifer’s hellish secret before her boyfriend has to pay the price.
The BBFC promised me a film containing ‘very strong language, bloody horror, sex references and drug use’ and to be honest, I feel quite let down. It's true, horror-comedy hybrids are hard to get right, but Jennifer’s Body just isn't in the same league as previous examples, like Ghostbusters or Shaun of the Dead. It was released only a month after Zombieland, another horror-comedy, but amongst all the other standard films Hollywood spits out each year, there seemed a considerable amount of talk about it. This film did seem to have some potential. The storyline; a sexy demonised high school student terrorising a small town, killing boys and making a small indie band famous in the process, although sounding exactly like something a teenage boy might dream of, perversely appealed to me. It suggested ample opportunity for some serious blood and gore, with a few one-liners to make it more interesting, and I thought it would be nice to present the female characters as more dominating, rather than the stereotypical ‘damsel in distress’ as most horror movies seem to prefer. However, within 7 minutes into the film, I began to wonder what all the hype had been about.
Written by Diablo Cody (made famous by Juno) the script was surprisingly poor. I admit, there were a few lines that made me smile, but nothing laugh-out-loudable. This would be fine, good even, if director Karyn Kusama had increased the horror, overplaying the killing scenes or making the audience scared enough to lift their feet above the gap below their seat. However, there wasn't a single scene that made me jump, and the only remotely gory scene was when Jennifer threw up what looked like tar over Needy’s kitchen floor. For a film about a demon eating boys, this seems ridiculous. The killing scenes themselves seemed to have no particular point, other than to show that people were dying, which I’m sure could be implied through other means that didn’t involve all the palaver of what little build up there was. There was no graphic violence, and only a quick shot of a mutilated body obstructed by animals. This was all of course, after Jennifer had got her first victim half naked and taken off her shirt, boobs covered by her hair, no doubt to protect what little dignity she has left. And boys, if you’re going to see Megan Fox get naked, you’re going to be sourly disappointed. There was only one other victim, whose death was shown by the shadows on a wall. Pathetic. It all begins to make sense as you realise that both Cody and Kusama are a rather inexperienced team, Kusama having been credited for only two films before this; Girlfight, (a female boxing movie) and Æon Flux (a futurific assassin film).
I really wonder what kind of genre they were really aiming at. It’s been categorised as ‘horror-comedy’ but it doesn’t really seem to fit into either. It could quite easily have been a parody; a spoof of any one of many provocable horror films that have been created over the years, but there were no intertextual references, no obvious links to any. So then you assume that they were taking it seriously. I find this impossible to believe, with the poor use of CGI and the shocking excuse for a narrative. And it simply lacked the terror that would allow it to be called a horror on its own.
Another big problem was the casting of Megan Fox (Transformers) as Jennifer. From what I’ve heard of her, she seemed to be pretty much just playing herself, with a different name, in a slightly less glamorous setting. Although her constant posing will be sure to get on your nerves, she actually rather suited the part of a demonised high school student, despite looking slightly too glamorous among the rest of the school. The theory was that when she’d been eating boys, she suddenly looked better and more refreshed, as opposed to when she hadn’t and was looking tired and drained, but I honestly could not see any difference. She looked stunning 100% of the time. I understand that people like Fox find it difficult to let themselves be seen looking bad, but I’m sure that after going through the trouble to lose 15lbs (as apparently demons are a super skinny 7 stone), it seems pointless when she couldn’t even give it the full emaciated I-need-another-human-feast look.
But obviously, it’s not her acting skills that made her famous, and Jennifer’s Body is no different; it certainly was all about Jennifer’s body. You may begin to wonder how she could be taken seriously as an actress when all she ever seems to do is show some flesh at a predominantly male audience, but apparently this is the type of character the casting director wanted. Apart from the unnecessary suggestions at nudity, but lack of it, and the completely pointless lesbian make out scene, Jennifer’s character was completely unrealistic and over-exaggerated, and I don’t mean in the ‘possessed by a demon’ way.
Jennifer’s best friend Needy showed much more thoughtful casting, being played by Amanda Seyfried (Mamma Mia!). She managed to make it the whole way through the film trying to stop Megan Fox from killing her boyfriend Chip, with her dignity intact, despite the slightly pointless sex/horror scene. Ignoring the seemingly unnecessary break up with her boyfriend and her supernatural ability to be able to tell when Jennifer was killing people, and where they were, Needy’s character was significantly more natural than the rest and actually portrayed quite well how many withdrawn high school girls must feel when being over-shadowed by a best friend with a bigger personality.
Adam Brody (The OC) played the ‘bad boy’ Nikolai Wolf; the desperate indie rocker who just wanted to make it big time. In his few scenes, he perfectly portrayed everything small time indie bands are, and as Nikolai said the only gag that made me laugh; ‘Do you know how hard it is to make it as an indie band these days? There are so many of us, and we're all so cute and it's like if you don't get on Letterman or some retarded soundtrack, you're screwed, okay? Satan is our only hope.’ I have to give the film some credit for his character. He was really the only male eye candy, and despite looking far too feeble to play a bad guy, the eyelinered rock bander was a good style for him. The casting director had been considering actual rock stars, like Pete Wentz or Joel Madden, but thank god they didn’t. So, Adam Brody, thank you for making this film so much more bearable. Despite this, I can’t say I’d ever want to see it again, and I promise you I will not be buying it when it’s released on DVD.
Good effort though, it’s nice to see someone trying the demon angle a little differently. I hope it works out better for you next time. But hey, if you want to see Megan Fox prancing around on the big screen, be my guest, but I should warn you, be prepared to lose 102 minutes of your life. It will feel much longer. of course, this is all just my opinion.. feel free to disagree...ܤ
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