Jennifer’s Body
Directed by Karyn Kusama
20th Century Fox, 2009
By Sean Kelly
Jennifer’s Body is the follow-up film written by Diablo Cody after she won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Juno. Some debate may rage about whether or not this is an original film, but I’ll get to that later.
First, I’ll write the part of the review where I rant about how much I do not like Megan Fox. I am saying this because this fact may well have affected my overall enjoyment of the film. I want to reiterate my belief that Megan Fox is an over-sexualized piece of eye candy, who will probably never be treated seriously as an actress. However, that works to her favour in this film, since she plays… an over-sexualized piece of eye candy — who happens to eat those who are attracted to her.
On the other side of the coin is Amanda Seyfried, who, while also very good-looking, comes off as a more normal and down-to-earth girl when compared to Megan Fox. However, just to make sure that everyone watching the film doesn’t miss that fact, her character is nicknamed “Needy” and wears glasses.
Now as for the originality of the story… a few years ago at TIFF there was a Midnight Madness hit in the Canadian werewolf film Ginger Snaps. I will not say that Jennifer’s Body is a carbon copy of that film, but there are definitely enough similarities between the two that it can’t really be ignored. They’ve pretty much just switched the werewolf for a man-eating demon. Some of the similarities, such as both having two female protagonists — one who’s popular and one who’s not — can be excused as coincidental; however, there are some specific plot details that are so similar it’s scary.
Speaking of scary, Jennifer’s Body plays more as a dark comedy than a pure horror film. In fact I don’t think the film was ever trying to be scary. But neither was it very successful at being funny. While the TIFF audience laughed at the jokes, I found most of the humour came in the form of bad puns more worthy of a groan. The film features the same kind of teen slang talk that you heard in Juno, but it’s gone stale. It just wasn’t as effective this time.
Overall, I found the film so-so at best. I’m sure my reaction can be attributed in some significant part to my dislike of Megan Fox. However, I also think that Diablo Cody shares the blame in writing what was meant to be a clever dark comedy, which turned out to be neither very original nor very funny.
Yeah, I think I’m kind of over Megan Fox too. She’s looking so bizarre lately; kinda plastic-y and overly made up. She seems to look way hotter in movies; when I saw the season premiere of SNL I was like, “What the hell is that thing wearing a bad Megan Fox mask?”