Jennifer's Body

The AM Take

Pub. 2009-09-18

Megan Fox unleashes her fangs in Juno-scribe Diablo Cody's latest harangue on female empowerment, Jennifer's Body. Fox plays the demonic Jennifer, a small-town head cheerleader who feasts on her mighty horny male followers to stay pretty. It’s up to the nerdy-but-beautiful-on-the-inside BFF, Needy (Amanda Seyfried), to put a stop to Jennifer before the succubus makes every boy in town part of her low-carb diet.

Critical Appeal

This intestine-splattering teen comedy is better than your average creature feature, but not quite up to the expectations haunting Cody’s sophomore outing. There’s little doubt that Juno fans will eat up more of the whip-smart but truly empty one-liners that made the earlier film such a hit with bloggers. Each character sounds like Cody getting off on herself. The sporadically funny slang can’t really be considered dialogue since nothing valuable is ever said. It’s really more like tweeting out loud.

What carries the film is the rare -- though not entirely original -- subversion of gender roles in the horror genre. Shelved is the typical rape fantasy in which busty beauties get penetrated by masculine, knife-wielding boogeymen. Instead, we have Jennifer as a metaphor for hormonal teenage girls who victimise boys.

Girlfight director Karyn Kusama is a keen choice to milk this neat concept for whatever it's worth. She depicts boys as weak, sensitive types who need to borrow their chick’s sweater and girls as vainglorious, over-empowering monsters who need more than a Maxi pad to contain all the blood they unleash. It’s simple, but it works.

Guy Appeal

Jennifer’s Body is about as scary as Mean Girls, which makes a lot of sense since Cody’s comedy about evil high school girls is really just a gory and potty-mouthed version of the Lindsay Lohan movie.

Megan Fox is game for Cody-speak, showing off some acting wares -- instead of just her barely covered derriere -- in a role where she plays off people as opposed to talking vehicles. And she’s in good company with the underappreciated Seyfried. But both actresses are subject to a script that limits them to caricatures, and all they can do is liven up the proceedings.

With a plot that often goes off the rails, Jennifer’s Body is best appreciated for those slick moments when its star gives the kind of hickey men die for… or die of.