Showing posts with label Horror. Show all posts

Movie Review: Jennifer's Body (2009)


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!

Signing Off,
Jagannath (Jesse)

Related:

Film Review: Paranormal Activity (2009)



Not a [REC], But Great Anyways!

Film: Paranormal Activity
Released (1st screening): Oct 14, 2007
(Theatrical): Oct 16, 2009
Language: English
Direction and Screenplay: Oran Peli
Cast: Katie Featherston, Micah Sloat

To put myself on an objective plane before writing this review, I should admit that I consider 2007 Spanish zombie thriller [Rec] to be THE scariest movie I have ever seen. Now, contrary to whatever my co-watcher says, (who reportedly still has nightmares about a teenage Linda Blair scaring the whole world in 'The Exorcist') [Rec] scored over all other films thanks to its pseudo-original footage format, where a camera crew gets stuck in a zombie-infested Barcelona apartment building.

Oran Peli's Paranormal activity, however, has a different premise; but here again, the camera is operated by a protagonist: an over-enthusiastic man (Micah Sloat) who is interested to find out the truth after a host of spooky occurences in his house, that are somehow connected with his girlfriend's (Katie Featherston) past.

Screened for the first time in late-2007 during the Screamfest Horror Film Festival, it took two years for the film to find a proper distributor. After a slew of incidents that included proposals to re-shoot and even a hassled Steven Spielberg claiming that the DVD of the movie was 'haunted' (but he ended up liking the movie too), DreamWorks and Paramount finally released the film, 11 years after the first horror pseudo-documentary film of its kind, 'The Blair Witch Project' hit screens.

Even though my co-watcher decides to go to sleep each time I begin one of my history lessons, cinema-goers have been tastefully acquainted with this 'style' of film-making in 1998, thanks to 'The Blair Witch Project'; the success of which, however, did not generate a string of below-average films of the type (Thank heavens!). [Rec] came in 2007, its not-so-good Hollywood remake 'Quarantine' came a year later and in 2008 itself, a similarly shot 'Eco-terror' film ("What's that?" my co-watcher asks. "Films like Godzilla", I reply) 'Cloverfield' took home a fair amount of moolah.


So is Paranormal Activity special, or different, or better than its predecessors? To put it fairly, it is a heck of a scary film. The amateur footage looks amateurish enough to make you believe as if you are really watching 'the real deal'. The slow (albeit, steady) curve of the story has everything from low-key titillating shock-effects like small sound distractions whenever 'the demon' is around; to nerve-wracking sequences where doors are closed with heavy bangs and protagonists are dragged away by a scary and invisible force. The acting is effectively natural, Katie is easy on the eye, Micah is effortless; the fact that Katie is called Katie and Micah is called Micah within the film boosts the aunthenticity factor as well.

The real kicker is perhaps the ending which has the potential of a fairly harsh kick in the 'Courage Guts' of the more 'gallant' viewers (Like 'me'). But on a totally personal level, the original 2007 ending was much more 'complete' than the new one. ("We all know Hollywood. The new ending nearly guarantees a sequel." my co-watcher explains. And I guess she is right. Paramount has already made public their plans for a sequel)



So Oran Peli does strike gold in his first directorial venture. And maybe its not as good as the 'sleekly planned' and 'budgeted' [Rec] (Let me see Michael Bay or Peter Jackson pull off a movie like this with 15000 bucks!), but its sure to go down in the history of Horror as a really good 'Screamfest'. After all, a movie which boasts the presence of a talented screamer (Katie was good!), it's only fair that the movie gets a fair share of scared screamers from the audience as well.

Rating: 7.5/10 (My co-watcher doesn't believe in ratings, but What the Hell!)
Signing Off,
-Jagannath (Jesse)
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