Jennifer’s Body (2009) – Film Review

09/01/2013

1961

Director: Karyn Kusama
Cast: Megan Fox, Amanda Seyfried, Johnny Simmons
Certificate: 15

by Matt Callard

“Hell is a teenage girl” claims Jennifer’s Body in its opening moments. Although, in this film’s case, hell is a teenage girl who has been sacrificed to Satan by an alt-rock band and become a murderous, flesh-eating demon.

When, after an unfortunate liaison with the lead singer of a band, Jennifer (Megan Fox) turns up at her friend’s house covered in blood, she declares herself ‘famished’. Although she doesn’t know it yet she has been transformed from a proverbial maneater into a literal one. And, boys being boys, and Jennifer being Megan Fox, there’s no shortage of willing teenage boy-meat on the college dinner table.

“Never flirts with a twist or a double-cross”

Jennifer’s Body would like to be a sassy, post-modern, girl-power B-movie for teenage irony lovers but, once the film is set-up, it makes such an obvious, heads-down bee-line for its denouement that you wonder whether the writers have even heard of Buffy or Twilight or, heck, Scooby Doo, even. There’s nothing so much as a flirt with a twist or a double-cross or even a slight feint.

The teen horror market is overfull right now. Jennifer’s Body needs a whole lot more than a few glib wisecracks and a director with talent if it really wants to subvert the teen-horror genre.
5/10