If looks could kill, you’d be dead before she can even sink her teeth into you. So it isn’t the movie you are seeing, so much as it is the bewitching Megan Fox, who has a Medusa quality that turns most men to putty. But I will try to snap out of that; seriously, other cast, the direction, and writing, all contribute to a great high school horror comedy.
It succeeds by several irregular elements, including the solid teen portrayals and Diablo Cody’s (Juno) knack for the delinquent language as writer. There is nothing too new here as far as bloody high school lockers, but the very good acting played by stars not long out of secondary education, is all good. Not to mention the way the less than platonic bond between Jennifer (Megan Fox) and Needy (Amanda Seyfried), let’s just say it works.
Needy’s boyfriend Chip (Johnny Simmons) plays the adorable dude a little too well. Additionally, director Karyn Kusama (Girlfight) succeeds in making a Buffy the Vampirish movie, with dirty teen slang, from a female perspective. Kusama combined took her inspiration from Carrie, Heathers, and A Nightmare on Elm Street to get the mash she was after. Her perspective, the movie narration begins with “Hell is a teenage girl….”
Jennifer is the alpha female high school cheerleader who can get what she wants, and she makes the worst choice, of course. Her best friend is Needy played remarkably well by cute blond Seyfried, whose slightly protuberant eyes and upper lip holds our eyes on screen, as much as Fox does. Needy is Jennifer’s wiser chaperone with intuitive powers. Jennifer, who is more insecure than we know, throws herself at a rock band visiting the small Minnesota town. She hits on leader Nikolai (Adam Brody), who, as she says, is real “salty.”
The band needs a virgin to sacrifice, for the rapacious Nikolai and his band are tired of their lack of fame and success, complaining that it’s hard to “make it” unless they get on Letterman, and there are “just so many of us.” “Satan is our only hope,” he says. The small town bar catches on fire and provides the greatest chance the band has to persuasively kidnap Jennifer. She returns to Needy after her ordeal, vomiting black goo and looking like hell, but still alive. The sacrificial lamb is aloof to the town tragedy and preying on high school boys while Needy tries to figure her out. The guys can hardly be accused of crass behaviour, despite their language, for the sin of falling for Jennifer. Even Chip may be next on the block.
If you fall for Jennifer, you will die. It is a lesson that is never learned. The theme is still the lack of self-restraint, lust, heartlessness, jealously, vindictiveness, cruelty, and irrationality of teens, both boys and girls. In other words, just like adults; but with teens they are not so far passed innocence and their falls are sloppier. In this Jennifer’s Body greatly succeeds. It is a far funnier demographic that is all peaking emotions, undeveloped minds and exploding hormones, like when Needy and Chip are in bed together and she tells him to “put it in.”
The volume dial is turned slowly up with the pop rock tracks in each sentimental scene, like in all good teen movies, and there are some loud surprises. Mostly, see this movie for the relationship between the two friends, and not just the radiant Fox, but also for the surprising performance of Seyfried.
