Monday 2 November 2009

Jennifers Body and the feminist horror movie

I wanted to love Jennifer's body, I really did. It had a lot of things worked for it: the title, the horror-comedy premise, written by Diablo Cody (who I know infuriates a lot of people but I adore), starring Amanda Seyfriend aka the gone but never forgotten Lily Kane. But why was it such a hot mess?

First the casting, I love Amanda Seyfried but she was frankly miscast as the dowdy inassert Needy. Come on she's beautiful. Megan Fox was not as bad as I thought she would be in this role.
However Jennifer and Needy as frenemies has very little chemistry let along enough to justify the tacked on faux lesbian stylings. Adam Brody as the devil worshipping hipster was knock-it-out of the park amazing

But the main issue I had was with the shallow, poor plot. The scene in which Jennifer is sacrificed to the demon is genuinely frightening and horrifying scene. The parallels to sexual assault make it almost too awful to watch.

But then Jennifer starts killing innocent boys. Why after this traumatising incident does she not go after the people who did this to her. The film could have easily explained this away by giving her no memory of what had happened to her or some prohibition against taking down the boys. But there was no explanation as to why this hugely powerful creature would take her vengeance. This film tried to examine the nature of female friendship, teenage girl as demon, small town woes and as a result didn't really look in depth at anything.

I couldn't help but feel that inside this movie there was a far more interesting subversive film fighting to get out. The closing scene over the titles is admittedly awesome. I literally cheered as the blood splattered over the screen. Yes finally I thought, but by then it was far too late.

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