Retro Movie Review: Jennifer's Body

Jennifer's Body


Basic Premise:
BFFs Needy (Amanda Seyfried) and Jennifer (Megan Fox) are two of the only survivors of a horrible bar fire that claimed the lives of many. The tragedy hit the small town but none so hard as Jennifer who now has an insatiable appetite for boys that has nothing to do with sex.





Review:
Oh my God, is it over? This is one of those movies where you constantly look at your watch and feel every single minute as though it were the longest in existence. I thought it would never end. I'm amazed I sat through the whole thing. Only the need to see some sort of conclusion to this train wreck kept me watching when all I wanted to do was turn it off.

It started out okay -- a little high school cliche but still okay. I was with them and suspending disbelief until the fire. That's when WTF hit hard. This rundown bar becomes a death trap reminiscent of the very real 2003 tragedy at The Station. I thought that whole scene was done in incredibly poor taste. There are so many ways the writers could have transitioned to Jennifer becoming a man-eating demon and that was the worst possible choice.

But hey, if you're going to choose poor taste, you might as well sample the whole buffet. Needy and Jennifer survive the fire by the skin of their teeth and Jennifer decides this is a good time to go get laid by the band, who also managed to escape.

WTF swings and hits a homer, ladies and gentlemen.

It kept getting worse and worse. The writers try to salvage the situation with some girl-on-girl action, but this isn't Wild Things and they aren't Neve Campbell and Theresa Russell.

The only redeeming quality for the whole movie (though it didn't redeem it enough in my mind) was the "day after." For those who don't know, horror flicks very rarely go into what happens to the courageous hero or heroine once they've slain the killing machine and barely made it out alive to greet the dawn and the cops. I've always wondered about stuff like that. Of the horror that I've seen, only Candyman ever touched on this very pertinent subject. I mean, if you were the cops and you show up to find dead bodies everywhere and one sole survivor raving about demon-monster-McStabby, wouldn't you just assume this person is the nut job who did it and lock them away? Yeah, I would too.

Well, Jennifer's Body does actually touch on that subject as their closer. So I'm happy about that. It doesn't make the movie worth it. Nothing could make this movie worth it. I want to sanitize my computer now after apologizing profusely to it for putting that DVD inside of it.

This movie makes me ask a question I have whenever I see a dumb/bad movie: Do the actors and director (hell even the producers) know a movie will be crap when they make it? I'm not talking about the naysayers of Dirty Dancing because they were so totally wrong. I'm talking about from script to film, everyone involved is pretty sure this is a waste of their time but they'll do it anyway just for the bullet on their resumes.

For this movie, I would have to say yes.