Body Parts and Dialogue Chunks

Teenage Girl-Power Gore Romp Dies Early
by Morgan P Salvo
        
The first line of Jennifer’s Body is, “Hell is a teenage girl”. Let me rephrase: “Hell is enduring a teenage girl/demonic possession movie written by Diablo Cody.”

From the producers behind Juno, allowing director Karyn Kusama(Girlfight) into the fold and written by Cody (Juno) this group must be slapping themselves on the back for how clever they think they are. Suffocating from Cody’s overtly wordy and relentlessly self conscious droll narrative, this flick is an exercise in extreme futility. It’s okay if one character talks like a wiseacre (as in Juno) but when every character has essentially the same smart-aleck voice it rings untrue and loses its punch. Real people do not talk this way EVER.
Plot goes as follows: Reserved bookworm Anita “Needy” (Amanda Seyfried), and, conceited sex-pot cheerleader Jennifer (Megan Fox) sharing little in common are best friends since sandbox days. Following a disastrous fire at a local bar, Jennifer mysteriously gains an appetite for human flesh and begins to devour the bloody entrails of guys who never stood a chance with her. After the school's male population dwindles, Needy discovers that a demon had taken possession of Jennifer through a satanic sacrifice and vows to stop the blood-thirsty rampage either by releasing the demon or by killing Jennifer… tough choice for a high school student.
The obvious metaphor about a teenager's insatiable urges manifesting themselves into turbo-overdrive is just too witty and cynical for its own good. All “taking you out of the movie” moments for pompous hilarity were exempt of humor and devoid of comedic value. Some of the one liner jokes were followed by another line added to emphasize the first, and a third line in case you didn’t get it or still think it’s funny. There are even pauses in dialogue for the audiences to laugh, during which not one person in the theater did, once…ever… at all. It feels like writer and director were aspiring to be so clever that audiences would swoon and garner immediate cult status, envisioning the waiting lines outside for Jennifer’s midnight showing. At least there’s decent gore.
Outlandish attempts are made at intercutting scenes. Director Kusama lingers too long on each scene and doesn’t build one iota of tension between the cross-cutting of a sex scene and a kill scene. The weird delivery of lines can be blamed on the director, but the main culprit is the writer. There is literally no excuse for this style of writing. The actors are fun to watch and do their best amidst wretched cinematic timing. Fox (Transformers) actually played innocent teenager better than hot-chick-slut and Seyfried (Mean Girls/Big Love) handled all her moments with cool believability.
The terminally clever dialogue of this movie might actually make a great play or musical, giving the actors time to wink at the audiences, telegraphing the laughs and showcasing all the clever fun to be had in a high-school-slut meets/kills boys in a gory romp.
Missing a chance to join the ranks of good horror flicks that are actually funny (Slither/Tremors) or some that contain female wit and wisdom surrounding girl problems (Ginger Snaps), Jennifer’s Body falls more into the Airplane/Scary Movie category where all the jokes are hand delivered to you or thrown into your face becoming an exercise in “how-much-stupid-can-you-take”. In this case I couldn’t take it for another second after the first 10 minutes. After viewing Halloween 2 and Sorority Row I thought “third time might be a charm” but this is the worst one out of the three. JB is too full of itself, backfiring into empty and vapid. I am so disappointed in this movie I just want to send it to its room.

Jennifer’s Body
Starring Megan Fox, Amanda Seyfried, Johnny Simmons, Adam Brody
Directed by Karyn Kusama
 1 star