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OK, so here's what Jennifer's Body has for it going in. It's a horror movie where someone turns into a monster and eats people, which you just don't see much these days. It's written by the same person as Juno, that hyper-literate teen pregnancy comedy people wouldn't shut up about for like two years but I still managed to avoid seeing. Horror written by people known for something very much not horror-adjacent has the potential to work out well. Plus I figure there's two recent horror movies out there with a weird feminist bent to them, so I might as well watch one of'em, and I have absolutely no interest in watching Teeth. It's not that I have a problem with the premise of Vagina Dentata: The Movie. It's just that, as past consciousness streams show, I've seen plenty of horror movies where penises are bitten off, and it just that it doesn't strike me as a concept which can possibly carry a whole movie. Same reason I have no interest in watching Human Centipede. There's the bit you know about because it's the central premise, which is gross, and then there'd have to just be like 70 minutes of awkward padding. Also? Every single preview here was for one of those Fox Searchlight people-sure-seem-to-like-Napoleon-Dynamite plotless fake indie movies. Which gets back to my earlier point. Anyway though, movie time.
Here's girl A lying around in her room, and girl B looking all stalkery at her through the window. Actually, since girl A is the titular Jennifer and girl B is actually named, and I'm not making this up, Needy, I might as well use them. Now we're cutting to Needy in the future I guess, where she's in prison, narrating about all the fan mail she gets and bragging about her reputation for insane violence. Actually... she just kicked a couple orderlies across the room so I guess it's actually a mental hospital... with prison jumpsuits and getting thrown in the hole. Now we're moving on to describing how her home town of Devil's Kettle is named after this waterfall leading down into a hole from which nothing ever comes out. "Maybe it leads to another dimension... or maybe it's just really deep." We then begin the actual movie proper, and IMMEDIATELY have a random background character call out Needy for doing the whole anime schoolgirl lesbian crush thing that I usually snap and call someone out on when watching the sort of shows where you always have that character. By the way, did I ever point out that recent extra wad of Azumanga where the author just went through chronologically adding new scenes at various bits of the time line and one just has Osaka walking up to Kaorin and asking "So are you a lesbian or what?" It's pretty spit-take inducing.
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Anyway I had the liberty to get sidetracked like that because yeah, this movie has a weird sort of dialog going. It's like everyone talks in a constant stream of pop-culture except instead of everything being a pop cultural reference it's just weirdly nonstandard phrasing. Anyway, Jennifer is a total slut and Needy is her stalker/sidekick for reasons that are ill-explained thus far. They're going to see some obscure band in one of those tiny bars in the middle of nowhere which you expect to be full of violent cowboys, because Jennifer wants to sleep with the lead singer. Which, much like Needy's stalkery, seems to be based only in plot convenience, because wow this is a really terrible band, and not even the sort of terrible band that attracts groupies. Suddenly the stage catches on fire and everyone starts dying and screaming. See the disconnect in those last two sentences? Yeah, it was pretty much that quick. That was like the quickest spreading fire I've ever seen.The two girls escape, lead singer comes out to see them, and in intentionally unconvincing fashion, suggests Jennifer come to his van. You know, where it's safe. Needy remarks that Singer is "skinny and twisted and evil like this tree I saw when I was a kid" which is accompanied by a totally random but honestly pretty nifty one second flashback.
Sometime later, Jennifer calls some Male Friend to express concerns about how her friend was spirited away by a lame band after the horrible fire where everyone else burned to death. Male friend though, for some odd reason, seems to be more concerned with the horrible fire and the death toll and need to call the fire department though than the friend in potential danger bit. And you know, it's pretty hard not to take his side since getting picked up by the lame band and sleeping with them in their smelly van was kinda the reason they left in the first place. Turns out Jennifer's just fine though. Here she is having snuck into Needy's house, hanging out in the kitchen, smiling, with copious amounts of blood dripping from her mouth and soaking her clothes. Then she goes over to the fridge, pulls a whole chicken out, eats it in animalistic fashion, makes a horrible demonic screeching sound, and pukes out a ton of weird black oil that dances around like those weird magnetized mercury deals a little while later, then she laughs. So right. It's clear what's going on here. She's totally drunk! Needy is actually legitimately properly disturbed, but the next day Jennifer shows up at school acting like nothing's wrong, so it really does come off like one of those deals where someone gets way too drunk and then blows off the friend who has to clean up all the vomit.
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Everyone else is properly mourning how a bunch of students at the high school, and also the spanish teacher were killed in the fire. Jennifer's just joking about it though. Because she's, you know, an evil slut who's also possessed and/or a monster. Needy talks about the situation with Male Friend and Goth Guy about her problems. See, these are decent friends. They show concerns about your mental health, and don't vomit ichor all over your floor or drag you to see lame bands they want to sleep with. Jennifer meanwhile goes off the console the captain of the football team, who kinda looks like the chief engineer from Battlestar Galactica. Which is so not how a supposed high school student should look. You're supposed to be 30 and MAYBE pass for 20. When you maybe pass for 30, you're doing it wrong. Anyway, she takes him off into the woods to sleep with him, but al the forest creatures gather around and chitter warnings at him. Seriously. There's a fox and a deer and a beaver and a raccoon and some rabbits and some crows and squirrels gathered around like it's a Disney movie. Then she unhinges her lower jaw and rips his throat out. A nearby teacher overhears the resulting horrible screams, but figures, you know, that's just grieving the fire victims. Also? This scene was a perfect place to throw some gratuitous nudity in, but they actively avoided doing so. Oh and the next day said teacher finds the body, with bambi there eating the exposed viscera. OK, that whole scene? That was great. Are we going to go with that level of silly in general? So far this movie has really been giving me this vibe that it really wants to go full on silly like Dead Alive or Idle Hands but it keeps chickening out at the last minute.
Then we've got a scene with Needy's mom who's entirely too likable. She's like this incoherent drunken berserker, except someone's mom. I'm exaggerating a bit, but it's a speech pattern thing. Hard to get across. Meanwhile Jennifer's in party mode, skinny-dipping and burning her tongue just for the fun of regenerating it. We also have the national media totally getting all over the town talking about how horrible it is how they had this horrible fire and then this horrible murder the next day. See, points for pointing out how nobody ever seems to care when this stuff happens in most horror movies. Usually it gets arbitrarily covered up so the sequel can be set in the same town. Now we've got talk about how the band is donating 3% of the profits to the song they wrote about everyone dying to victims, Needy pointing out that they suck and didn't try to save anyone from the fire being pretty much the only witness, to which some random person objects, saying wikipedia says they did. So yeah. I'm thinking it's the director's fault. The script to this movie is clearly in full on horror comedy mode, but the soundtrack/cinematography/delivery of lines keeps trying to force it towards seriousness. Cast off your shackles movie! Embrace that you are silly! Give me an old school blood geyser! There's still time!
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Now to fill this awkward void that's come about because we're really holding off on introducing victim #2, Needy is sleeping with Male Friend. Here, again, we have a refreshing absence of toplessness. I'm actually really shocked by all the dignity and restraint and discretionary shots this movie has given, you know, how it was marketed as THE GIRL HOLLYWOOD HAS DECIDED IS THE CURRENT PINNACLE OF HOTNESS TOTALLY STRUTS AROUND NAKED AND KILLS GUYS AND MAYBE HAS HOT DEMON LESBIAN SEX WITH SOME OTHER GIRL! Seriously, go find a trailer on youtube or something and tell me it fits the movie I'm describing. The actual target audience here seems to be, you know, me. Except again, the director kinda ruined it by throwing in all this blasted restraint and dignity that has no business being in here. Oh and here's victiim #2, Goth Guy. He's being slept with/murdered simultaneously as Needy and Male Friend are having their pretty PG-13 sex. Needy is getting some kinda crazy psychic connection thing going on here though, seeing her thoughts, and the ghost of the football player and stuff.
So yeah, she freaks out, goes for a drive, almost runs Jennifer over, panics, comes to a stop, has her pounce on the hood of her car like some big monstrous animal with a feral grin... we're still not jumping into Full On Horror mode because again, it isn't that sort of movie. She heads home to calm down, and hey, there's non-bloody Jennifer in her pajamas going all "Let's have a slumber party!" And now here's a gratuitous extreme close-up girl kiss, presumably added in just to be stuck in the trailers to promote this as like the complete opposite of he movie it actually is. She's like all "ha ha! Made you kiss me!" Then she, in totally non-horror fashion, explains the actual plot. Saying that the band are "like, totally agents of Satan with really bad haircuts." They were looking for a virgin at the bar, which I may have forgot to mention, because, you know, that's who you sacrifice. Instead they got Jennifer who claimed to be such despite being, as I keep mentioning, a total slut. So they dragged her out to the weird waterfall and they're all, come on, we're never going to really make it as a band if we don't use this magic ritual I found online to sacrifice... what was your name again? To the devil in return for fame and fortune for our lame band! I'm not directly quoting, but they're totally talking in that we're nerds not taking things as seriously as the situaton demands sorta way. Then after she tells them her name is Jennifer they all start singing 867-5309 while ritually stabbing her. But you know, since she was totally not a virgin, she just got possessed by a demon rather than one being summoned to make them famous.
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She goes on to explain how, OK, after she kills and eats someone and she's "full? She's like, totally invincible? Here check it out!" She cuts a big slice through her arm and watches it regenerate. "Isn't that awesome?" See? See? This is the silly movie this is supposed to be poking through again. Quit trying to go all legit horror with this director! Anyway, retroactive actual victim #1 from this flashback was the foreign exchange student everyone figured died in the fire. Also, the next day Needy goes and finds the awesome demonology section of her school library and studies up. Come to think of it, this whole movie would kinda work as an episode of Buffy. Male Friend is rather shocked that the library has such a section when Needy info dumps on him. This is some pretty great exposition here too.
Now here's some random fake indie movie music! It's almost time for the big dance. Male Friend's mom insists he take pepper spray to defend himself from serial killers. He figures he'll be fine because "he's been using the bowflex" but eventually relents. Also I just realized Needy's mom there is played by the same person as the main character from Strangers With Candy, with maybe a fifth of the age makeup and without all the creepy. Anyway though, yeah, we've reached the denouement here, where Needy's ready to stab her best friend in the heart before she has time to murder her boyfriend, as he's he only male character left in the movie besides the teacher. Oh and look, the sucky band is actually coming to play at their dance. Turns out they actually did get famous thanks to demon magic, the lack of virgin doesn't block that, just yields, you know, possessed girl. They still suck though. I'm glad to see that them sucking is actually vital to the plot though. Well OK, I guess not VITAL but you know what I meant.
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So yeah, run run run to the pool. It has to be the last murder site because we've already had the woods and a bedroom and Needy seems to be the only one who owns a car. Also, wow, what's with the sudden random awesome set design? Did I miss something where they introduced the old abandoned public indoor pool covered in vines in the middle of nowhere? Anyway, she's almost too late. His throat gets a little ripped out as she gets there, he tosses her the pepper spray, and... we stop the big final fight scene to toss teenage girl insults back and forth. "Oh you're not even flying, you're just hovering there!" OK, yeah, I guess they aren't really typical insults. It does come out that even before getting possessed, Jennifer here was always a really bad friend, so after some ichor spewing and some impaling on a pool skimmer they decide to stop being friends and Jennifer leaps out the window in search of a different victim. Male Friend dies anyway though because he did kinda get his throat torn out and all.
We then cut to... oh hey that's clever. You know the scene I mentioned at the start of the movie with Jennifer laying around in her room and Needy out the window all stalker style? Yeah, that was more of a flash forward it turns out. NOW we have a proper fight scene. Trying to cut Jennifer's heart out with a box cutter doesn't work at first, but then she's momentarily weakened when Needy rips off her BFF NECKLACE! So then she finally stabs her through the heart. ... and then her mom comes in. Yeah, that's not how this sort of thing is supposed to go on. That's a pretty awkward situation. And this is why the whole movie is narrated from prison. But then it's revealed that oh hey, little known fact but if a demon bites you and doesn't manage to kill you, you absorb some of their powers. At which point she levitates up, uses he super strength to kick out the window, happens to find where that crazy waterfall actually opens back up, and hitches a ride to the next concert the band is doing to totally go kill them and stuff. Then the credits roll, be we have this backstage flavored footage of them partying in their hotel room... and then their bodies being discovered the next day, and evidence tags on all their various drugs and blood stained stuff. With nice happy music.
So... yeah. That was actually a good movie. The tragedy is that with a director who was in the proper spirit of things, that would have made a list of my top X horror movies. Or at least one I'd mention in the same breath as Idle Hands as often as possible. There was an AWFUL lot of sadly restrained silly in there. Seriously though, I can't get over the misleading marketing there. If trailers for that had been actually representative, with stuff like the forest critters scene, and some of the actually representative silly dialog? I would have gone to see that in theaters. As would many other people I know. As is? No way in hell. Looked awful. The only sort of people who'd go see a movie with the trailers this had are the sort of people who... really would be more likely to just go and type "Megan Fox naked" into a search engine and save their money. Or not think to do that and then be severely disappointed by the fact that every iota of sleaze this movie had to give was already shown in the trailers. I wonder how many other enjoyable movies I've missed out on because they were misleadingly presented as something I'd never want to watch?
