Jennifer’s Body
A tempting, yet unfulfilling offer
I came across an interesting article recently
on one of my trusted movie review sites (Screenrant in case you were
wondering) regarding the appeal of Jennifer’s Body. They culled
together information that showed that while male viewers seemed to be
more on the negative side of things, the female audience was much more
welcoming to the movie’s premise. To me, this isn’t much of a surprise,
given how the heroine is female, the killer is female, the writer is
female, and the director also happens to be female. This is a
horror-comedy made by females, and is presumably aimed at a more
feminine audience. Given how I’m on the male spectrum though, how was my
take on the movie? Did I agree with my cohorts, or did I find myself
siding more with the opposite sex?
Plot Synopsis: The nerdy Anita
“Needy” Lesnicky has been friends with the infinitely more popular
Jennifer Check ever since their early childhood, despite the skepticism
of everyone else who feels their relationship to be implausible. One
night, their unexceptional hometown of Devils Kettle gets an appearance
at the local bar from the cult rock band Low Shoulder, which wants to
try reaching out to the more rural areas as opposed to their usual city
life. Despite Needy’s initial reluctance, Jennifer eventually convinces
her to come along with her to the place. During the band’s performance,
the bar soon catches on fire and collapses, but not before Needy,
Jennifer, and Low Shoulder make it out alive. Jennifer accepts the
band's offer of a ride home, to which Needy declines because she feels
they are a sketchy bunch. That night, Needy encounters a bloody and
bruised Jennifer rummaging through her house for food but can’t get an
explanation as to what happened to her. Over the next few months,
multiple bodies start turning up dead and eaten up, and Needy suspects
that Jennifer may be something more than human.
After my viewing, it wasn’t hard to understand why the guy crowd won’t connect to Jennifer’s Body
the same way girls will. In a rather nice twist on horror conventions,
the victims in the movie are primarily all male while the killer is a
flesh-eating woman. And aside from those victims and Chip, there really
aren’t any central male characters. Instead, the movies primary focus is
on the deteriorating relationship between Needy and Jennifer. Despite
what you may think, Needy is actually the main protagonist of the story
rather than Jennifer, which is fine by me since Amanda Seyfried is the
better and more experienced actress between the two. Her character goes
through a lot of crazy shit during the course of the story, and Seyfried
believably portrays Needy’s gradual descent into madness. Johnny
Simmons does the best he can, but Chip’s somewhat diminished role in the
plot tends to keep him mostly on the sidelines. And although many slam
Megan Fox for her limited acting, I thought she did damn fine in the
role of Jennifer. The script mainly called for her to be seductive,
sexy, and bitchy, and she nailed all three of those aspects. You can
practically feel the evil inside her as she snarls and wiggles her way
around Diablo Cody’s trademark snappy dialogue.
Actually I found the Cody-speak more enjoyable
when it simply tried to sound cool and snappy, rather than cool and
funny. I’m not sure why exactly, but it could be because the moments
that I found to be funny were too few and far between and therefore felt
forced. Just to put this out there, I learned that Cody wrote the
screenplay a little while before Juno and then let it sit on
the shelf, so the uneven writing is more understandable. But while her
dialogue isn’t quite as smoothly integrated as it could have been, the
woman must be commended for at least trying to write a horror movie that
isn’t simply another cookie-cutter kill fest. As I mentioned before,
the plot tends to flip the usual horror gender conventions around in
some nifty ways. Another convention that is played on nicely is the
virginity (or lack thereof) of the girls, which figures into Jennifer’s
demonic transformation. There are a couple of plot holes that go
unexplained, such as the odd psychic connection between Jennifer and
Needy, but its fun to see a horror movie that is at least trying to play
by its own rules.
The flip-side to the uneven comedy is that Jennifer’s Body
turns out to be pretty decent when it dips its hands in the horror
realm. The sight of a bloody Jennifer spewing out black goo ala Regan
from The Exorcist sent some chills through me, as was the
exploitation of the fear that the hottest girl in your school could
literally be a smutty man-eater. And despite the lack of gore, which I’m
sure many hardcore horror fans will be disappointed by, the kill scenes
had a reasonable amount of suspense to keep them enjoyable, like the
one where we only see the silhouette of Jennifer munching on a poor sap
as the blood spews on the wall. Director Karyn Kusama had a lot to make
up for after the disastrous Aeon Flux, but she seems to have
redeemed herself by proving to be a decent director of horror. That
doesn’t mean that Kusama can craft an entirely smooth experience
throughout however. Many of the music choices for a few scenes come off
as obnoxious and annoying, while some scenes also seem heavy-handed.
Also, the much talked about make-out scene between Seyfried and Fox
pretty much comes out of nowhere other than to generate a little
titillation.
Of course, I’m sure that most of the male demographic is really just going to see Jennifer’s Body
expecting to catch a little Megan Fox nudity. Well to save those
simpletons their free time…we are not shown any nudity on Fox’s part
except for some concealed skinny-dipping and tease moments. But they are
missing the point, since Kusama and Cody didn’t set out to cater to the
male instincts. They wanted to create a horror movie specifically for
women, and Jennifer’s Body proves to be a mild success on that
front. It may not be all it tries to be, but there is enough here to
warrant at least one view.
2/4
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