Movie Review: Jennifer's Body (2009)

8:32 PM Jagannath Chakravarti 1 Comments

A Tasty Little Cocktail!

Movie: Jennifer's Body

Directed by: Karyn Kusama

Written by: Diablo Cody

Cast: Megan Fox, Amanda Seyfried, Johnny Simmons, Adam Brody

Objectively speaking, Megan Fox has the capacity to do a lot of things to a lot of men; and that happens to include me as well. But I never imagined how one fine night, she would go on to scare the living daylights out of me!

Jennifer's Body, the much-hyped non-Transformers appearance of the Transformers-star, is essentially a high school horror flick based on a fictional little town called the Devil's Kettle. Also the fact that its written by Diablo Cody, the Academy-Award winner writer of Juno, added that something extra to the prevalent hype surrounding the film. Megan plays Jennifer Check, a 'hot' cheerleader of questionable morals ("You sure wish your school had one of those" my co-watcher grins. "Well, don't you?" and the grin vanishes) It all starts one night when Jennifer takes her friend Anita "Needy" Lesnicki (portrayed commendably by Amanda Seyfried) to see an upcoming punk-psychadelic-emo rock band called Low Shoulder (featuring Adam Brody as a lead singer Nikolai Wolf) perform. Well, perform they do until the venue, a bar, catches fire and crumbles to the ground within a matter of minutes, killing several people and high school students in the process. After a series of bizarre events during the night that includes murders, sacrifices and even Satan, it is seen that Megan Fox.. I mean, Jennifer, has been turned into a flesh-eating (still hot) high school huntress of sorts.

It is quite unfair to critically comment upon a movie essentially made for light entertainment and cheap scares, but Jennifer's Body somehow transcends its genre-afflicted prejudice and turns out to be a fairly interesting, and scary horror flick. Megan Fox (And I solemnly swear I'm NOT being partial just because she's Megan Fox) is perfect as a cheerleader gone 'too' bad. Her blood-splattered appearance during the night of the fire at her friend's place is as scary as a high school movie can get, and Fox does manage to give the viewers the creeps.

Also impressive is Amanda Seyfried as Jennifer's dorky, subdued pal Needy, who is the real protagonist to Fox's antagonistic act. The underlying homoerotic attraction towards Jennifer is portrayed by Amanda with an impressive amount of subtlety. Diablo Cody definitely won't get any Oscars for this one, but it has to be a better screenplay when compared to the other high school flicks of late. It was interesting to notice the visibly darker shades of Cody's comic sense. The direction of Karyn Kusama is rather impressive, with her clever balance of horror, humor, a lesbian make-out and a certain entity called Megan Fox, all mashed together to form a rather tasty little teen-horror cocktail!