TIFF Review: Jennifer’s Body

Jennifer’s Body

OPENING: 09/18/2009

STUDIO: Fox

ACCOMPLICES:
Trailer, Official Site

The Charge
She’s evil… and not just high school evil.

Opening Statement
A genre mix-up from the 1980s, Jennifer’s Body is fun by way of homage, evoking pleasant memories of Carrie and quirky John Hughes teen drama films. Problem is, I never met anyone who actually wanted to see Sam from The Breakfast Club turn into a flesh-eating demon and murder her high school. It is the kind of idea that sounds marvelous on paper, discussed animated over a few beers, but feels ill-conceived and confusing the next day while hung over.

Facts of the Case
For awkward teen Needy (Amanda Seyfried) high school life is a complicated affair. Her best friend from childhood, Jennifer (Megan Fox) is the prettiest cheerleader in the school who terrorizes the boys and gets all the attention. It gets more complicated when Jennifer drags her out to a local bar to see a band from the big city, and vanishes into the back of their van with handsome singer Nikolai (Adam Brody). When Jennifer returns, she is covered in blood and howling in a decisively demonic fashion. Needy watches in horror as Jennifer acts normal on the surface, but begins picking off the male population one at a time. Needy tries to convince the school that Jennifer is evil (not just high school evil) but no one believes her. But when Jennifer sets her eyes on Needy’s boyfriend Chip (Johnny Simmons), all bets are off. Best friends forever doesn’t extend to demonic activities, and Needy is about to redefine their relationship.

The Evidence
In Jennifer’s Body, a teenage girl turns into a flesh eating demon and goes preying on dumb, hormonal teenage boys, eating their entrails and tearing them from limb to limb. If ever there was a metaphor for the collective high school experience, this is it. One wonders why no one has thought to make a serious go at combining the awkward teen comedy genre into the glorious excesses of the horror film circa 1980s. They pair well together. Sommeliers everywhere would be proud. Oh sure, horror films are usually about high school students, and teenage hormones are definitely a factor, but these plot elements are mere delivery devices to set up the next homicidal slaying, not to actually develop a character base. In classic horror, once the girl takes off her shirt, her role in the film has ended, usually by machete. Not so in Jennifer’s Body where the women hold all the cards, have all the power, do all the butt-kicking and end up murdering the boys.

And leave it to Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody to turn the brain-dead horror film into a teenage comedy worthy of introspection and pop culture irony. Imagine Juno, but instead of a teenage knocked-up girl, she was a demon that murdered and ate you. All the snappy dialogue, the witty repartee, the sassy pulp culture references remain intact, and you either love her style or hate it. No loosely scripted horror film, this; Jennifer’s Body is a fully-functioning film full of character development, romantic entanglement and cathartic drama. The most satisfying moments are the same in which Juno found its success: the tender yet awkward courting and mating of teenage lovers, the embarrassingly awkward fashions, the well-meaning but totally lame parents. In many ways, Jennifer’s Body runs on the same fuel that drove the career of John Hughes for the better part of a decade. It just makes pit stops regularly to murder people in orgiastic fashion.

When you consider the previous work of director Karyn Kusama (Girlfight, Æon Flux) her attraction to this screenplay is immediately evident: she likes to make strong films about strong women kicking butt. One can definitely view Jennifer’s Body through empowered eyes; the film glows with the gleeful power of the women in control of her own horror film destiny, with two “BFF”s battling tooth and nail over their boys, rather than being consistently on the run. In this film, men are weak and childlike, hormonal and sex-obsessed, easily lead astray and muted like cattle, happy to wait like slobbering fools for Megan Fox to take off her top and eat their spine. They are brainless jocks and whiny emo boys. The girls, on the other hand, rock. It is a refreshing twist, and nice to see a bit of gender reversal in the horror film genre. Well, horror-ish. Jennifer’s Body isn’t really a gore-fest of terror; it’s too hip and cool and sassy to actually terrify its audiences. People looking for genuine thrills should check their expectation levels at the door, as most of the violence hovers at a PG-13 level. The film scores its points in the irony department only.

Megan Fox is perfect in the role as the slutty teen-turned-demon, maybe a little too perfect. Having seen her in real life at the screening, I can attest that she is the living embodiment of a sex demon, one of those alarmingly attractive people able to make people dizzy and fall down. Having her play the role of a sex demon on film is sheer excess, like cutting off the arm of a patient to treat a hangnail. Sticking her in short skirts, low-cut shirts and big shiny red lips is like overkill to the atomic bomb degree. As for her acting, one never actually sees her do much of that in the film. Much more surprising and impressive is the performance of Amanda Seyfried, the main character in the film, although you wouldn’t know it from all the advertising laden with the scantily-clad Fox. Seyfried is cute and charming, dorky and endearing, beautiful and awkward, essentially the perfect casting for a teenage girl. She brings life to the role far beyond the expectation of any horror film, and makes it easy for audiences to sympathize with all her problems, social and demonic alike.

As a tongue-in-cheek girl answer to the horror genre, Jennifer’s Body entertains with some decent laughs, but the film struggles with its own burden of being hip and clever and edgy at all times. Having borrowed heavily from at least three movie genres, the film feels like a deck with too many playing cards in it, a random shuffling of too many approaches to the same film. Is this a comedy? A teen drama? A horror film? An exercise in verbiage from Diablo Cody? There are some genuine harmonious moments where the stars align and everything just feels perfect—the ridiculous emo band parody with Adam Brody as a struggling musician-turned-Satanist, the burning down of the local bar and the surreal small-town reaction (“very”, as they say in Heathers), but there are many more moments that just feel like square pegs in round holes. Cody’s script is a love-it-or-hate-it affair, and you either adore her clever wordplay and sassy one-liners, or you loathe them within an inch of your life. To be fair, Jennifer’s Body will give audiences numerous opportunities to experience both sides of that particular coin.

Closing Statement
A mash-up of iconic horror and teenage romance films set to march at a clipping pace by the rapid-fire pop culture verbosity of screenwriter Diablo Cody’s screenplay, Jennifer’s Body is cinematic recycling at its most calculated. It feels like a concerted effort to be “the next cool film”, the new Heathers, the new Carrie, the new sensational pop culture film, and covers its bets like penny chips at a roulette table.

When taken individually, all the elements are well-executed—the horror is squeamishly fun, the teenage romance is heartfelt and believable, and Cody’s dialogue is as witty and clever as one expects. These disparate elements in of themselves are enjoyable, but the film tries excessively hard to equally represent all three genres simultaneously. Try going to the theater and having the screen spit into threes, with three separate movies playing side-by-side, constantly overlapping and self-referencing. It gets messy, and keeping the concentration up can be challenging.

The Verdict
Cute, but way too schizophrenic . But that’s high school girls for you.

7/10

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