In Juno, lingo-bending scribe Diablo Cody showed off her horror affection by dropping a completely random and unwarranted reference to classic gorefest director Herschell Gordon Lewis. For her Post-Oscar sophomore effort, Cody chose to dip her ink in the genre, writing as well as producing this Sam Raimian blend of horror and comedy.
Jennifer's Body follows the Scream strategy, in which their terribly unoriginal slasher formula is supplemented only by a wink-wink attempt at satirizing the genre. But in Scream, the movie being self-aware of its own cliches is meant to be its core charm—it's a slasher movie in which the characters are painted as cognizant of the fact that they're living a slasher movie—while in Jennifer's Body, the self-awareness is more about being coy, being detached and insisting on the put-on that it's hip to the cliches of the average horror flick. When it is really anything but.
Megan Fox plays this Jennifer whose body we're supposed to ogle at. After being kidnapped by an indie rock band called Low Shoulder (admittedly a terrific name for a shitty one hit wonder emo band), she not-so-mysteriously returns as a literal demon whose power and beauty rely on eating human flesh. Her best friend Needy (Amanda Seyfried), used to cater to Jennifer's every whim, wises up to her transformation and tries to stop her from eating the entire student body.
Yep, it's your same old-same old horrorshow. Hormonal teenagers of the white-middle-class-suburbia variety ripped to shreds one by one by a supernatural force in gruesome fashion, minus the new plot or the clever kills. Everyone dies the same way in this movie—mostly off-screen, though there's still gore in the aftermath shots.
So what's the draw? Obviously it's the patented Diablo Cody dialogue, still soaked in made-up slang ("You're jealous. You're so jello that you're lime-green jello and you don't even know it.") and embarrassing puns ("Oh my god, move on dot org!"). Jennifer's Body is exactly how you would imagine a Diablo Cody horror film to be, to a tee.
Aside from the lack of scares or even fun kills (which pretty much puts its horror credentials into question), its attempts at humor are pretty weak. Like when the members of Low Shoulder replace sacrificial ritual chants with singing Tommy Tutone's "867-5309" to win the irony vote.
The only true highlights are the adult characters, like Adam Brody's perfectly douchey rocker or J.K. Simmons' frazzle-haired high school principal, who has a hook for a left hand for no reason other than the sheer novelty of it—not unlike Juno's hamburger phone. I'd say something about Amy Sedaris' turn as Needy's overworked mother too, but she appears in the movie for all of five minutes and not even in a comedic role. What a waste.
Jennifer's Body is worthless without its quips, but even those have lost their zing. As much of a cyclone of nonsense Juno was, at the very least the lines were individually creative and defined Ellen Page's character as a quick-witted snarkmachine. Jennifer's are pretty much unwarranted. The lines are either uninspired ("There's no such thing as PMS, it was invented by the boy-run media to make girls seem crazy."), doesn't make any sense ("It smells like Thai food in here. Have you guys been fucking?") or just dumb as all hell, such as the following exchange:
"Jennifer says the lead singer is extra salty."
"Salty?"
"Salty means beautiful."
"Then you must be soy sauce, babe."
Audible sigh. Maybe I'm getting old in my twenties, but while I can still follow the meaning behind these words, I just can't seem to ketchup.
"Jennifer's Body" opens September 18, 2009 and is rated R. Comedy, Horror. Directed by Karyn Kusama. Written by Diablo Cody. Starring Adam Brody, Amanda Seyfried, Amy Sedaris, JK Simmons, Megan Fox, Johnny Simmons.
