A few thoughts and rhetorical questions on “Jennifer’s Body” before we begin:
1) Megan Fox wasn’t kidding when she said not one word on the head of Diablo Cody‘s script could be changed or touched. Alas, tone is everything.
2) Did Radio-Ready Emo records (aka Fueled By Ramen) help subsidize the budget or something?
3) Maybe we shouldn’t read the script before we see the movie?
Tart, largely humorless and tonally challenged, “Jennifer’s Body,” is what happens when good scripts go wrong or perhaps when directors completely miss the point of the text. Lost in translation would be putting it too mildly. The central failing of this sarcastic, “Heathers“-esque, delightfully-glib teen comedy-horror (and a pretty sad one when you think about it) is how the picture becomes exactly what it’s meant to subvert, tease and in some cases, mock. Yes, it’s also celebrating the tropes and cliches of horror films, but the Karyn Kusama-directed picture misses most of the savage, and devilishly arch wit of Cody’s script and takes things far too seriously that what was on the page.
‘Body’ is supposed to show the “horror” of teenage girls, their meanness, their cattiness, their hellishness (admittedly, they’re a scary bunch); the callous way they can rule and terrorize the school with their self-entitlement and brutal cliques. Enter Jennifer Check (Megan Fox) a typically hot and shallow cheerleader type who is — much to the bewilderment of the entire high school — best friends with the dumpy, nerdy and plain-Jane-like Anita “Needy” Lesnicky (a homely Amanda Seyfried). Their relationship is incredibly one-sided with the eager and keen Needy practically basking in the glow of her unassailable teenage friend who can have any boy or girl she wants (shades of bi-ness notes flutter everywhere, though still somewhat restrained). The impossibly attractive, but likely insecure Jennifer has ruled and bossed her blood-sister around since the sandbox days (sun-dappled flashbacks!), much to the chagrin of her harmless, socially-status-challenged nice guy boyfriend Chip (nice kid Johnny Simmons). J.K. Simmons also stars as a teacher and Amy Sedaris has a small part as Needy’s mom.
So Jennifer always gets her way and soon, up against pointless protest from Needy, the two friends go to a local bar to check out an emo rock band from “the big city” (they live in a no-nothing jerkwater burg called Devil’s Creek, be sure to spot that Cody cameo as a bartender). Needy is of course instructed to dress hot, but not too hot — she can’t overshadow Jennifer’s mojo. The band Low Shoulder (fronted by Adam Brody) seem instantly on the make and after playing their hit song, the bar inexplicably sets fire and almost everyone is killed. Jennifer and Needy escape through the bathroom and outside, Brody’s Nicolai Wolf frontman character seduces Fox into what seems like a sure-fire date rape situation (this shit is UN-PC and very unfunny).
In the aftermath, the band and their rock anthem become heroes to the bereaved community as their tragedy becomes national news and the spotlight on the group in this incident gains them unprecedented media attention (rumors begin to sprout that they heroically saved some patrons in the bar; on paper, the whole thing sounds like a twisted take on the infamous and unfortunate Great White nightclub fire from 2003).
Without spoiling anything much more, the band turns out to be a Satan-worshiping cult that has sold their souls to the devil and through some sort of botched ceremony, Jennifer becomes demonically possessed. She must “feed” on teenage boys (though as she says in the trailer, “I swing both ways”) to survive. When she does, she is full, fleshed out and feeling more confident than ever. When she’s starved and hasn’t killed, she looks gaunt, pallid and enervated. And the film basically swings back and forth from this pendulum leaving Needy to figure it out and possibly save the day.
You don’t need to have read the “Jennifer’s Body” screenplay to know it’s supposed to be like a wicked take on the sarcastic and already-dark teen comedy “Heathers,” and then transposed onto the horror genre — generally a male-visioned and written domain — and given a female spin. Perhaps a take back the night, as it were, and make it safe for women to traverse the gore genre, but with wry, sardonic humor. Kusama lets the humor — aside from the acerbic one-liners that read great, but largely fall flat — take a back seat and the horror take the wheel. What’s meant to be an ironic and at least semi-satirical take on the genre devolves into a straight-faced and mirthless run at the genre therefore mostly becoming as tedious and conventional as much of the dreck from that ilk. Once you’ve reached the last half, you’re in a humor-free and un-ironic world of horror and not sure how it ever became so typical and rote.
At first, Kusama nails it. The first 20 minutes of the film were deliciously twisted even though the Diablo-isms peppered throughout will make some die laughing and force others to convulse with apoplectic annoyance. The humor is black, perverted and you may feel guilty, stupid or both for enjoying the hell out of the delectable opening that sets up the characters and film. But, “Jennifer’s Body” is the art of diminishing returns and by the time we’ve reached the end, your patience, resolve and sense of humor have been tested far too much. Kusama seems to be far too at home in the realm of fantastic action sequences, the blood, and the gore, and far too out of her element when it comes to handling the heart of the story — bastardly little irreverent teens. In her hands, the humor in every “horror” scene flies completely out the window, and any sense of nuanced dialogue is discarded in favor of anything not even remotely resembling the important facetious tone. Sure, that balance is perfectly struck early on, when no teenage demon from hell is terrorizing a small backwater town by feasting on dumb jocks. But after Megan Fox’s Jennifer becomes possessed, the movie slowly goes downhill, again crumbles into reductive horror cliches that rob the film of its inherent cleverness and wit.
Furthermore, the music is an incessant and largely annoying batch of Fueled by Ramen, Fall Out Boy-ish radio-tailor made rock that feels crammed into every single scene with no reprieve. Even those with little knowledge or care about music in film will probably be offended at what sounds like an advertisement for TRL-like commercial emo-pop the entire time. Moreover, the misfired tone is greatly evinced in the Low Shoulder anthem played throughout the film. It’s supposed to be a “cheesy rock song” played so endlessly throughout the narrative that it becomes comedic, and a running gag every time its played and adored by the small-town plebeians. In Kusama’s hands (and whatever piss-poor band composed it and clearly missed the point as well), it’s far too earnest and played completely straight. Any comedic value the song is supposed to contain is immediately sucked out of the room by the worshiping, music-video-like direction. The film’s score is also too serious and too melodramatic.
Kusama might be the female counterpart to Zack Snyder: all technique and not even a soupçon of soul or subtlety. She can make Jennifer float in the air, bite into necks or trash cars with the best of them, but when it comes to carefully refine the pitch and tenor of line reading and performances, forget it.
There are some delights and joys in the first act of “Jennifer’s Body,” but thanks to some hamfisted filmmaking and loss of identity (this is supposed to be a comedy is it not?) the picture essentially, and ironically, becomes the dour teen horror it’s trying to conspire against. [C]
