Jennifer’s Body

Review By: Ryan Hamelin
RyanHamelin@TheCinemaSource.com

Movie Grade: B+

If you’re already shocked by the grade, believe me, I am too. I will preface this by saying that if you were born before 1980… you will not get this movie. In all likelihood, you won’t find it all that funny and you won’t understand how teenagers can look or sound so stupid. If you are a horror fan, you will get more out of Jennifer’s Body due to the way it cleverly twists age old horror clichés while managing to maintain a feeling of dread not unlike its classic roots in Brian De Palma’s Carrie. The enjoyment to be found in this film is how wholly 2009 it is, and should it gain a cult following over the next few years, I guarantee revisiting it will slam you right back into the same seat where you saw it for the first time.

Diablo Cody is an interesting example of a screenwriter who doesn’t make a distinction between what she says and what she writes. Whenever you attempt to create dialogue, it’s almost always a conversation you’re having in your head, not something that you know real people will say. Cody leapfrogs the barrier between written and spoken word to deliver lines that are full of her own crackling wit while playing at perfectly natural, almost improvised levels of honesty. This movie, along with Juno and Superbad, are the closest Hollywood has come to writing a screenplay that accurately reflects how modern teenagers communicate, and here is where it is likely to become dated in the future. Sure there are plenty of references that feel a little contrived, but the majority of them are so spot-on that they have a painfully sharp quality, a barbed sting against the vain consumerism of pop culture. Cody knows she’s good with dialogue, and even where the set ups for the words falter slightly, they lend more than enough energy to revitalize the scenes.

That brings us to the cast, an eclectic collection of different types of people, the kind of diversity not normally associated with a horror film, but which would be right at home in your local high school cafeteria. Megan Fox is that girl, the self obsessed hot chick that eats men… only now she does it literally. Amanda Seyfried does a wonderful job as the sandbox best friend who’s still our title character’s go-to-girl despite not growing up to be gorgeous and man-eating. Her character, named Needy, is the true heroine of our story and manages strong turns in both the dramatic and comedic moments. The film switches between the horror and the comedy at lightning pace, and they needed actors who could believably keep up. Seyfried is the definite highlight, as we think we know where she’s going to end up, without really believing how she gets there.

Megan Fox is the obvious draw of the film, and not unlike marketing Star Wars with Darth Vader’s helmet, the antagonist here manages to command ...