Friday, December 25, 2009

Jennifer's Body

Though I felt like I was in the minority here, I actually liked the premise of this film going into it. Granted, I was a little nervous about Diablo Cody's quippy writing, but I thought it was great that we might get the latest sex-symbol starlet as the antagonist in a sort of monstrous-bodily-transformation slasher movie.

While part of me doesn't want to allow people like Meghan Fox into my horror, the much larger part of me is a fan of fun slashers, so I didn't have a very hard time talking me into giving her a shot.


In about the same way, as much as I hate to say it, when I see Paris Hilton in a horror movie, it doesn't usually hurt the movie, sometimes it's just the opposite in fact. I was expecting, or at least willing, to hope for the same sort of enjoyable performance from Megan Fox.

Unfortunately, the whole thing was pretty much just a big disappointment. The movie just didn't try hard enough to be the great horror film I think it could have been, and didn't even come close to being whatever other teen movie genres it flirted with to try to gain acceptance with more general young audiences.

For a moment, I thought it might be headed in the right direction. The movie was taking Meghan Fox on a pretty nice progression from here... to here.


Perfect. Or almost... there's a lot of filler in between, but this is exactly what I want to see happen to her... the main reason I expect the movie could be interesting.

One problem though, the filler makes up most of the movie. As is pretty obvious up there, the one shot showing her fancy new smile is not something that we ever really get to see. That one blurry still is about the best I can do to show the quick glimpse we get, and then it's gone... ah well, I'm sure they're just teasing us for the big reveal later on...

As it turns out, no, they're not.

I had to spend the whole movie dealing with the development of the silly rockstar-demon premise, eagerly awaiting the big reveal where I'd finally get to see Megan Fox devour someone in a shower of gore. My reward at the end? I get to see her shadow while she eats some emo kid. What a letdown.

If only we'd gotten to see Megan Fox in full makeup as the misshapen monster seen only by way of its shadows in the movie (seen in the trailer at the bottom, 45 seconds in), not only would it have been a much better movie... it would have generated more media buzz than that lackluster lesbian liplock they fell back on instead.

Speaking of which, this movie just needed more sex. It spent an awful lot of time hinting at sexual things, with no exploration of them. In a genre well-known for gratuitous nudity and teenage sex-romps, why wouldn't you go all the way with themes like that? Normally I'm the one rolling my eyes at the ridiculous amounts of tits in the old teen slashers, but here, the absence of anything sexual is just one more thing that the movie started, but then let sputter out before it got anywhere with it.


In conclusion, this Fangoria picture, because it's better than the actual movie.







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