← Back to Reviews
 

Jennifer's Body


Jennifer's Body


Jennifer's Body: starring Megan Fox (kind of), written by Diablo Cody (Juno), Directed by Karyn Kusama (Girlfight),and it's a horror movie! Should be the greatest horror movie released in the last decade, no? No. I still reserve that title for 2008's Splinter.

Jennifer's Body has a lot going for it. Even though the premise could be described as original, the storytelling in this 102 minute movie moves at a snail's pace.

Jennifer is a high school popularatti, who is BFF's with a girl named---wait for it--Needy (how cool). These two girls have grown up together and share everything from emotions to angst. The point is they are deep chums. One night at a night club, Jennifer gets horny for a lead singer and after a great tragedy involving fire, is coherenced into the bands' van on the assumption that she's a virgin. Needy (Amanda Seyfried) lets her go, but soon regrets it because Jen comes back a very different person!

I could go on about the plot, and not that it would spoil anything, but let's just say the occult is involved. And well, the above virgin reference should fill you in a tiny bit.

This really isn't a horror movie so much as a high school dramateen involving two girls with different motivations. The clear star here is Amanda Seyfried. She has those eyes that convey what her lines won't deliver. She moves about the movie confused about friendship, love and mild jealousy. Her love for Jennifer is an interesting piece of plot because it's at once envy, perhaps lust, then turns to confusion and heartbreak when Jen begins to eat her classmates. The script only touches on this, but Amanda brings the point home nicely as an actress.

Megan Fox is passable as Jennifer. She never brings the essence of her character through the screen. It appears that she doesn't quite get what her character is about, instead reacts only to the confines of the film. Her complexities and situations are written to be profound but Fox seems lost in some other movie and never really connects the dots as well as her co-star (Seyfried) does. Think of it this way; like a 5-year-old girl singing Etta James' "At Last".

Yes, Megan Fox is hot. She beautiful. She's got a great body! Unfortunately, that doesn't excuse her ignorance as an actress for not seeing the underlying commentary in her film and acting it out appropriately. The Joke is on Megan here because the fact that she doesn't get it comes across on the screen and the film makers may have just given up in hopes the audience would see the irony. I did.

This movie is not a special effects showpiece, nor is it full of tremendous amounts of gore. What I mean is, it may be marketed as a horror movie, but clearly the film makers intended it to be a little more. Something tells me the focus group won out.

Jennifer's Body is like a water damaged Rolex watch; the outside is still intriguing, but the inner workings are damaged probably due to a single cog.