Jennifer's Body (2009)
Directed by Karyn Kusama
Jennifer, a gorgeous, seductive cheerleader takes evil to a whole new level after she's possessed by a sinister demon. Now it's up to her best friend to stop Jennifer's reign of terror before it's too late.
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And although much rides on Jennifer's relationship with her BFF (Amanda Seyfried), the movie doesn't establish much of a bond there, so it's hard to feel like there's much at stake (pardon the pun) when it deteriorates, leading to their ultimate, "Carrie"-ish confrontation.
Think Mean Girls meets Carrie.
Best is probably the shower-room scene that extends Kusama’s running Brian De Palma homage with a fairly explicit reference to Carrie, complete with steamy nude girls.
Oscar-winning "Juno" screenwriter Diablo Cody does her slanguage-laden best to make "Jennifer's Body" -- about a high school hottie ( Megan Fox ) turned boy-chomping demon -- into a femme-tastic anti-"Carrie," but her glib teen-hip dialogue mostly feels like self-conscious splatter over a sorely lackluster scare flick.
Cody's screenplay comes off frequently as an affectionate homage to DePalma's Carrie (down to its third-act prom scene), while possessing the knowing, caustic wit of Williamson's Scream scripts.
As for the film, it tries to be equal parts snark and snarl — think "Mean Girls" meets "Carrie."
"Body" aims for the knowing, tongue-in-cheek horror of the "Scream" series, and also for the pitch-black teen comedy of "Heathers."
Her sense of wordplay owes a clear debt to Heathers, but without that film’s satirical feel for the absurd.
Jennifer’s Body reminds me of the 1988 Heathers, taking high school conventions and flipping them on their wild, murderous side, all while the cool kids talk the talk.
At this point, Cody and director Karyn Kusama go all proto-feminist Heathers by way of a horror film on the material.
Stripped of these underlying psychological inferences and judged on its own cinematic merits, the film is more uneven, not quite as sharply satirical or groundbreaking as its past brethren, 1989's "Heathers" and 2004's " Mean Girls ."
A new Heathers proves elusive.
Screenwriter Diablo Cody ("Juno") and director Karyn Kusama ("Girlfight") have nth-wave feminism on their minds, but their abundant ideas never jell.
Cody�s script - under the director of Girlfight�s Karyn Kusama, who brings a top-notch visual style - manages to combine those things into something that is a lot of wicked fun.
Directed by Karyn Kusama, who peaked with her 2000 debut Girlfight, it's a paint-by-numbers story about a demon-possessed high school girl run amok in smalltown America, determined to devour boys in all the wrong ways.
Blame could also be on its director Karyn Kusama’s lack of experience, having done just a few things before, such as Girlfight.
I don�t really have that much to say about director Karyn Kusama (Girlfight) and Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody�s ( Juno ) malevolent horror-comedy Jennifer�s Body.
The film is the product of the "girl power" team of director Karyn Kusama ( Girlfight ) and writer Diablo Cody ( Juno ).
Screenwriter Diablo Cody ("Juno") and director Karyn Kusama ("Girlfight") have nth-wave feminism on their minds, but their abundant ideas never jell.
They have used some unconvincing arguments about subversiveness, but director Karyn Kusama and writer Diablo Cody's ( Juno ) willingness to resort to flogging the movie off the back of Fox's cleavage and highly-sexual public profile spoils what could have been an interesting and original addition to the slasher horror genre.
That is not to say that Juno screenwriter Diablo Cody's latest is not original—she has so many random ideas floating around in this story of two BFFs whose relationship is ruptured when one of them becomes a man-eating demon that it does have a style of its own.
'Jennifer’s Body' doesn’t have any of the zinging witticisms that were the hallmarks of Diabolo Cody’s debut effort, Juno.
Megan Fox supplies the titillation, Diablo Cody (Juno) the lingo, and every teen-oriented horror flick ever made the blueprint for this enjoyable, if skin-deep, lark.
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It's poorly paced and never scary, but there are a handful or three scenes that approach the eeriness of, well, if not The Shining, then maybe the pretty eerie Johnathan Glazer directed video for "Karmacoma" by Massive Attack that was inspired by The Shining.
Imagine a version of Mean Girls produced in Hell, and you will have some sense of the film�s tone.
Take Mean Girls or any other teen movie involving girls' jealousy and competition and blend it with the South Park episode in which no one will believe the boys when they insist that Chef's fiancée is a succubus and the result is Jennifer’s Body.
Think Mean Girls meets Carrie.
Stripped of these underlying psychological inferences and judged on its own cinematic merits, the film is more uneven, not quite as sharply satirical or groundbreaking as its past brethren, 1989's "Heathers" and 2004's " Mean Girls ."
As for the film, it tries to be equal parts snark and snarl — think "Mean Girls" meets "Carrie."
The movie has the darkness of Heathers, the edginess of Mean Girls and the absurd gore of Little Shop of Horrors.
The most captivating parts are when the touchy relationship between Jennifer and Needy takes center stage; the death scenes and more typical fright moments of walking through dark houses alone or being startled when something pops up are moodily shot by cinematographer M. David Mullen (2006's " The Quiet "), but pretty standard just the same.
Classic horror movies like " Carrie " or " Near Dark " sink their teeth deep into the dynamics of gender, adolescent lust and loneliness, the beating heart of authentic dread and terror.
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The movie has the darkness of Heathers, the edginess of Mean Girls and the absurd gore of Little Shop of Horrors.
CHICAGO – For Oscar-winning “Juno” writer Diablo Cody, writing “Jennifer’s Body” with “Transformers” star Megan Fox and “Mamma Mia!” star Amanda Seyfried as the two lead women was as much of an out-of-body experience as Charlize Theron’s against-type role in 2003’s “Monster”.