Jennifer's Body

The box office failure of Jennifer's Body was the story upon its release a few weekends ago. I caught it just before it seems to be on its way out of theaters (there were only two shows, one of them at 10:35 in the morning--AMC has a $6.00 A.M. show price that rocks, for those of us who have no family or social lives). It wasn't great, but I was into it and never bored. Why it failed is a question for those who study marketing, because I have no clue what makes the masses happy.

The focus of the marketing was all about the screenwriter, Diablo Cody, and one of the stars, Megan Fox, and both of them have been caught up in an absurd kind of backlash that I can't pretend to understand. With Cody it might be that would-be screenwriters, whom I imagine are legion in the L.A. environs, are jealous of an ex-stripper who scored big on her first try, with Juno. That and her dialogue contains an abundance of preciousness and pop-culture effluvia that defies reality.

Jennifer's Body has some of that--a line said by Fox, "Move on, dot org," will be the equivalent to Juno's "honest to blog"--but I found most of the writing to be smart and nicely off-balanced the horror.

Yes, this film is a horror picture. It has a comic tone, but there's no denying this a red-blooded fright flick, and as such it has more than its share of thrills and creeps. Director Karyn Kusama seems to have done her homework and channeled the best horror movies, from the Universal classics to Nightmare on Elm Street, and maybe even she or Cody read some of the books by Richard Laymon, who specialized in combining horror and teen sexuality. Jennifer's Body is not torture-porn, and may disappoint those who demand buckets of gore, but I found it to be evocative, especially a climax in an abandoned natatorium, which is beautifully shot by M. David Mullen.

The story is about two high school girls, played by Fox and Amanda Seyfried. The latter actress is really the lead, though she's frumped up in contrast to her more glamorous co-star. "Hell is a teenage girl," is Seyfried's first line of dialogue, doubling as tag line, and the spine of the piece is an examination of friendships between teenage girls, particularly when they have drifted into different social circles. Seyfried's Anita (known as "Needy") is the bookish, good girl, while Fox's Jennifer is a queen bee, a cheerleader and non-virgin (she's not even a "backdoor virgin," as she tells Seyfried,going to say that she had to sit on a bag of frozen peas). They were friends as a small children, and have maintained the relationship, however tenuous.

Fox drags Seyfried to the local bar (the girls live in the vividly named Devil's Kettle, Minnesota) to see a band she likes. The band is a great creation, the kind of band that is so calculating (they wear eyeliner and aspire to be "like that guy in Maroon 5") that they would probably would become popular. They are later described as "agents of Satan with really awesome haircuts." When a fire that is eerily reminiscent of the one in Rhode Island kills several patrons, the band, fronted by Adam Brody, lures Fox into the band's van. The next time Seyfried sees her friend, she's vomiting thick, black blood.

It seems that Fox's Jennifer fell victim to a botched Satanic sacrifice (that she was not a virgin is key) and has become a succubus, feeding on some of the boys of Devil's Kettle High. She starts with the football star and then a Goth boy (leaving him looking like "lasagna with teeth"). Seyfried suspects that Fox is not quite right, and the resulting showdown could be a metaphor for the mild-mannered girls of the world standing up to the popular crowd.

As for Fox, I haven't seen much of her acting. Mostly I've seen her in magazine pictorials, where she excels (she's also a gift to journalists for her exceedingly quotable interviews). A lot have slammed her for this and other roles, and while I can't disagree I wonder if she isn't getting a fair shake. The role of Jennifer calls upon two modes that aren't exactly conducive to Oscars: a superficial bimbo and then a demon-possessed succubus. Both of these modes require Fox to exhibit a kind of glassy-eyed soullessness that could be easily attributed to bad acting. Until she's called on to play something else (that doesn't require being second fiddle to giant robots) I'm willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, and continue to study the matter.