Jennifer's Body Film Review

Megan Fox Stars in Juno Writer's Awful Stab at Campy Horror

Sep 17, 2009

Following her Oscar win for Best Screenplay for the clever (if overly smug) Juno, Diablo Cody delivers Jennifer's Body, a horror film that is neither funny nor scary.

To a much more severe degree, Jennifer's Body suffers from the same core issue plaguing Quentin Tarantino's latest, Inglourious Basterds. Both films never really make good on the utterly ridiculous territories they tread, opting to dip a toe or two in to madness, where a full plunge was desperately needed.

Jennifer's Body is much closer in kin to the flood of pandering teen flicks populating the late 90s. All the hallmarks are there: Awful characters, worse dialogue and a general disconnect for the setting the film portrays.

OK, so that's probably about par for course for most films that get released year after year, but this one deserves extra attention due to the (questionable) pedigree of its young screenwriter. Whether or not you agreed with the Academy's decision to award Cody with a statue for her screenwriting debut, Juno, the film's script was definitely sharp.

Occasionally too sharp and spot on, but any hint of the charm behind these faults has vanished in Jennifer's Body. Every character chirps in Cody's Juno-hipster speak (is there an echo in here, or is that just the sound of lazy writing?), chock full of pop culture-isms and not-so-witty put downs and comebacks.

What's most surprising in Cody's gross miscalculations -- there's a lot of material that should have been axed in the earliest drafts of the script -- is her inability to capture high-school or female adolescence. You'd think the writer learned about high school by catching The Breakfast Club or Sixteen Candles on every other commercial break.

Megan Fox's Body and The Thankless Task Handed to Amanda Seyfried

Amanda Seyfried has been given the thankless task of taking the lead as the nerdy, (relatively) pure girl, Needy, while playing second-fiddle to Megan Fox's body. Fox, the Transformers starlet, is the titular (yes, pun intended) character, Needy's best friend.

Jennifer is the archetypal teenage bitch (hormones and all), but through a series of hopelessly tacky flashbacks (shot glossy, of course), we're to understand that Jen and her much more considerate friend, Needy, are an inseparable pair. Somehow, the relationship between these two characters requires more suspension of belief than anything else in the film, which by the way, centers on a boy-devouring, demon succubus.

Why we should care about Jennifer, Needy, Needy's boyfriend Chip (Johnny Simmons, fighting to get the best out of the script) is never really made apparent, since they, and every poor soul we see gutted, is just another prattling sack of premeditated catch phrases.

It seems Cody and Kusama were aiming for humor, a sort of schlocky send up to the horror genre. But both writer and director constantly undermine the opportunity for schlock appeal with awful decisions like showing the teen victims' devastated parents (very classy move), or letting Needy narrate her way through the school's collective grieving process. The World's Greatest Dad already handled this territory admirably, but Cody/Kusama never hit satire, or even spoof for that matter.

The tonal confusion comes from an overall middle ground approach to the concept, which while hardly groundbreaking, should have made for some playful B-movie spookery. And more than anything else, that's the real issue -- no one on either side of the camera, save Adam Brody (as the lead singer of a Satanist indie rock band), appears to be having much fun.

Fox, Seyfried and Company Never Had a Fighting Chance

Visually, Jennifer's Body is a grand recycling of just about every horror cliché in the book. Kusama doesn't have the wit nor chops of say, Edgar Wright, exactly the sort of person who could pull of something in the vein of Jennifer's Body. As the director, Kusama is merely there to translate Cody's so-called vision rather than dissect and appreciate horror film as a genre.

Fox -- while visually stunning in her own right -- is pretty flat for a vicious demon, but her two-note naughty-nice routine probably came from following the signposts as she was told. As Needy, the girl who knows the truth about Jennifer but no one believes, Seyfried does what she can with the cringe-worthy dialogue, but as the less interesting of two less-than-interesting female leads, she's pretty much lost from the start.

It's hard to blame the cast, though, when this is clearly Cody's miss. And in all fairness, if Jennifer's Body blows anyone's career, it'll be Cody's for sure. Several months on Hollywood's unofficial blacklist might teach her a thing or two about true terror. Or, for an even worse lesson in humility -- winning a Razzie award.

VERDICT: Wrong, wrong, wrong. Just plainly, horribly wrong, from beginning to end.

The copyright of the article Jennifer's Body Film Review in Horror Films is owned by Zachary Herrmann. Permission to republish Jennifer's Body Film Review in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.