“Jennifer’s Body”
2 out of 5 stars
Stars: Megan Fox, Amanda Seyfried, Adam Brody
Director Karyn Kusama
Rated R for sexuality, bloody violence, language and brief drug use.
Running time: 101 minutes
“Jennifer’s Body” is undeveloped. Naturally, I’m not referring to the bodacious assets of the sexy actress who inhabits the title physique. “Transformers” eye candy Megan Fox looks fabulous and proves she can deliver lines with sufficient credibility in her first real, uh, stab at doing so on the big screen.
No, disappointingly, it’s the nervy feminist concept behind today’s horror flick that is flat.
More than three decades after Brian De Palma’s “Carrie” had the craziest menstruation accident of all time, “Juno” screenwriter Diablo Cody and “Girlfight” director Karyn Kusama give us the first mainstream attempt at the gore genre made by, for, and about young women.
Hallelujah! Finally! A girl is the evil “slasher.” Another girl is the rescuing hero. And it’s the boys who are dumb, helpless prey hunted down and lethally ravaged with creepy sexual undertones.
But the iconoclastic idea is badly, er, executed.
Indie filmmaker Kusama doesn’t know how to set up a scary kill sequence or gradually build overall narrative suspense. And, while writer/executive producer Cody continues to have a way with pithy, pop culture-laced dialogue, her script here is lamely plotted. The result is a slow, meandering piece that wants to be a witty, blood-soaked satire of teenage girl anxiety but isn’t funny or frightening enough to really satisfy on either count.
Through machinations that seem silly even by horror standards — involving a ritual sacrifice to the devil by a struggling rock band led by “The O.C.”‘s Adam Brody — small-town high school cheerleader/hottie Jennifer (Fox) is transformed into a blood-slurping succubus. Her dorky BFF Needy (“Mama Mia”‘s likable Amanda Seyfried) is at first clueless as Jennifer craves killing boys to cure her supernatural version of post-menstrual syndrome: Right after she eviscerates and gorges on a horny teenage dude, Jennifer’s skin clears up, her hair gets shiny and she’s good to go for another few weeks.
“Nice hardware, Ace,” she quips as she gets a Goth guy to drop his drawers before she literally eats him.
But then the fiend sets her fangs on Needy’s boyfriend Chip (Johnny Simmons). Oh no you didn’t!! Snap!! Suddenly, the mild-mannered Needy forgets her girl crush on Jennifer and becomes a demon slayer.
In the process, there’s lesbian kissing in extreme close-up, vicious knife-impaling like metaphoric rape and other nods to cheap B-movie thrills. It might be enough to attract an audience, but not enough to make a “Body” count.
