Jennifer’s Body (*½)

Directed by: Karyn Kusama
Starring: Megan Fox, Amanda Seyfried, Johnny Simmons, Adam Brody, Kyle Gallner, J.K. Simmons
Seen: November 29th 2009

*½ Out of ****

The fall from grace doesn’t come much bigger than this. With grace I am in this instance referring to Juno, written by Diablo Cody, who also wrote this, the fall from grace… there are moments in Jennifer’s Body that makes it bearable, but the whole quirky dialogue and intelligent story thing? That remained behind with Juno, I saw nothing of the sort here.

Jennifer (Fox) and Needy (Seyfried) are best friends, and have been forever, despite their obvious difference: Jennifer is the hot one that every guy in school wants, Needy is the nerdy looking girl with the big curly hair, and unlike the normal way this kind of friendship goes in the movies, this one deteriorates because of a completely different set of reasons during the movie’s too long run. They are such good friends, in fact, that Needy can justify cancelling plans at the last minute with her boyfriend Chip (Johnny Simmons) to go out with Jennifer. On one of these nights they go to see the band Low Shoulder, helmed by Nikolai (whom Jennifer has a schoolgirl crush on), at a local pub, and the pub burns down with many people dying. The band, Jennifer and Needy survive, and the band half-kidnaps Jennifer in their attempts to get away from the scene.

Late that night Jennifer shows up at Needy’s house, but she’s different (and I’ll leave that to those of you who still want to see the movie). The next day however, she’s hot and perfect as ever again, but after this every now and then a young man disappears and is found ripped to pieces in the most gruesome way. Strangely enough, the town does not go into a panic mode, it rather seems that it is not really affecting them at all, only the fire tragedy has any effect on the characters.

There is very little to write about this film that doesn’t deride it, as it has the simplest (if stupidest) of plots, executed in the laziest possible way. For a horror film it has a surprisingly closed end, but we all know how easily the Hollywood writers can take a spoon to the bottom of that barrel. The only people who are believable are Amanda Seyfried as Needy and Adam Brody as Nikolai (even though it is initially a stretch to see Adam Brody as this type of a character – the economic downturn must really be getting to him to decide to act in a movie such as this). The music is mostly very cool and well-used, but that can’t make up for such a nowhere script.

The only thing that I enjoyed would be the big confrontational pay-off scene – where the title of the movie became more apparent (at least to me), almost at the end of the movie. The filming of the falling characters in slow motion coupled with the music was excellently done, and I actually forgot about the movie’s terrible execution for half a minute. But for only half a minute though, as the failure that is Jennifer’s Body came rushing back in after this scene upon realiseing the end was still a few minutes away. I would therefore implore you to give this movie a big old skip, do not waste your time or money here.