Jennifer’s Body

Diablo Cody’s follow-up to Juno, Jennifer’s Body follows popular high schooler Jennifer (Megan Fox) as she becomes a blood-thirsty monster after a mysterious encounter with a sleazy band of Satanists – which effectively forces her best friend (Amanda Seyfried’s Needy) to shut her down before the body count gets out of hand. As expected, Jennifer’s Body has been infused with a pervasively irreverent sensibility by Cody – as the quirky screenwriter places a consistent emphasis on precisely the sort of off-kilter dialogue for which she’s become known (eg “she’s actually evil, not high school evil.”) It’s clear almost immediately that the horror elements within the proceedings don’t fare quite as well as moments of a more overtly dialogue-based nature, as director Karyn Kusama generally proves unable to infuse the story’s horrific moments with any real sense of dread or terror. It’s consequently not surprising to note that the movie suffers from an increasingly erratic structure that effectively ensures that the bloody finale doesn’t quite pack the punch one imagines it’s meant to, with the lamentable lack of over-the-top instances of gore exacerbating this feeling. Having said that, however, Jennifer’s Body generally does manage to sustain one’s interest from start to finish (albeit in a less-than-electrifying manner) – with the performances often buoying the proceedings even through its ineffective stretches. Fox, playing a variation on her sex-kitten persona, does a surprisingly nice job here, though it’s Seyfried’s down-to-earth work that ultimately holds the movie together (and, of course, J.K. Simmons, cast as a dopey teacher, does his expected scene-stealing thing with total ease). The final result is a hopelessly uneven endeavor that’s good for a few laughs but little else, with the film’s almost total absence of palpable scares cementing its place as a less-than-stellar horror offering.

**1/2 out of ****