Caffeinated Clint
By Adam Frazier
Devil’s Kettle is exactly the kind of shit-hole town I grew up in. The high school is the epicentre of culture, and every stereotype and trend can be found in mass quantity. There’s the jocks, the Emo undead kids, beautiful plastic cheerleaders and the goofy weirdies that fill up their electives with creative non-fiction credits.
Jennifer Check (Megan Fox) is the most beautiful girl in Devil’s Kettle – she was voted Miss Snowflake two years ago when she was in the prime of her cultural relevance. Her best friend, Anita “Needy” Lesnicky (Amanda Seyfried) is the adorable klutz hidden under baggy clothes and Lisa Loeb eyeglasses.
One night the girls go out to Devil’s Kettle’s one and only nightclub – more like a bar that resembles a white trash Mos Eisley Cantina. Jennifer and Needy have gathered at this hive of scum and villainy to check out an underground indie band called Low Shoulder. The boys in the band are what you might expect, tight jeans and eyeliner – black fingernail polish and moon tattoos on their necks.
But there’s something different about Low Shoulder that separates them from all the other screaming Emo kids on MySpace – they worship Satan. Wait, I guess that really doesn’t separate them all that much. Let me be a little more specific: they are members of the occult and are in Devil’s Kettle looking to perform a ritual sacrifice.
Do you know how hard it is to make it in the music industry these days? All those pretty boys in mascara, belting out their emotions in all-black suits? The only way you can make it these days is sell your soul to the devil – or sacrifice a nice little piece of ass like Jennifer Check to the cause.
After escaping certain death at the hand of emotional occult followers, something has changed in Jennifer. Under the surface, there’s something evil – and not just high school evil. We’re talking real evil, the kind that spews black bile onto the kitchen linoleum and makes guttural noises not of this world.
Written by Diablo Cody, the stripper-turned-screenwriter, ”Jennifer’s Body” is a horror/dark comedy film. This lovely composite of ”Mean Girls” and ”Carrie” features Cody’s signature dialogue: overindulgent, witty banner sprinkled with only the most obscure references . Jennifer’s Body is absolutely laced with it, and just like in Juno, it doesn’t always hit the mark.
Say what you will about Megan Fox, but the girl is smoldering – and lets be honest, that’s all that really matters. She’s not out to win an Academy Award, she’s on the silver screen to wear belly shirts and show off her ridiculously hot bod. The other characters hold their own and give the film a true ’80s high school horror feel amidst Fox’s pure sex appeal.
When Collin (the resident goth kid, played by as Kyle Gallner) shows up, I felt as if I was transported to 1988’s ”A Nightmare on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master”, where jocks and brainiacs and beauty queens are all best friends. As a side note, Kyle Gallner will be submerged back into the high school horror universe in the upcoming ”Nightmare on Elm Street” remake, oddly enough.
Amidst the over-the-top gore, obscure too-hip teenage slang and that wonderful lesbian encounter between Fox and Seyfriend – ”Jennifer’s Body” delivered on being an entertaining movie. Not only that, but there’s something very profound to be said for a shallow, insecure girl who victimizes boy after boy trying to satiate an insatiable hunger for attention and love.
Extras
Pretty light extras package. There are two versions of the film (one runs about 5 mins longer than the other), and two commentaries – one featuring Karyn Kusama and writer Diablo Cody (which is a bit, well, meh) and a second track, available only on the extended cut, featuring Kusama (also a fairly uninteresting track).
