‘Jennifer’s Body’ reader submitted review

Readers send us emails on a daily basis, we get everything from “please link my website” to “hey here is a spy set photo”. Then there are the days when a reader sends us a review from a test screening. That is exactly what we got last week from a reader who saw ‘Jennifer’s Body’ and wanted to give us and all of you guys a heads up on the film. This is what we received, completely unedited and in its raw form.

THIS REVIEW DOES INCLUDE SPOILERS! If you dont want to read spoilers then dont read the review

Jennifer’s Body succeeds at doing one thing. The movie is a huge tease. I was looking forward to seeing this movie, but as a guy, I have to admit that I was looking forward to seeing “more” of Megan Fox even more than the movie as a whole. I found myself sorely disappointed.

It seems the studio who made this movie felt it was a good idea to advertise the movie in a way that makes guys think she gets naked and then completely fail to deliver. The trailers are very provocative and contain scenes implying that Jennifer shows a lot of skin, skin we would get to see in the actual R-rated film. Obviously we don’t get to see this in trailer, which gets TV air-time.

I assume the R-rating is for the blood and violence, language and maybe some of the sexual innuendo, but that’s all that’s “sexual” in Jennifer’s Body. The infamous scene from the trailer showing Jennifer, played by Megan Fox, getting out of the lake after skinny dipping is identical in the movie to the trailer. WE SEE NOTHING MORE!

I don’t mean to sound like a horny teenage boy, but that’s who the studio was apparently marketing this movie to and they used unfair tactics. The closest we get are a couple of scenes when Jennifer unzips to reveal some rather nice cleavage, luring her male prey in right before the kill. Otherwise, we get about as much skin from Amanda Seyfried who plays Jennifer’s nerdy friend Needy Lesnicky. Now, that’s a comical character name if I’ve ever heard one!

Jennifer’s Body begins with Needy looking all crazy, sitting in a mental asylum. Needy narrates the beginning of the movie with a voice over introducing us to her life and begins to explain how she got into the asylum and how it’s all Jennifer’s fault. Needy and Jennifer are “best friends forever” despite Jennifer’s cruel and conceited treatment of Needy.

Jennifer practically drags Needy away from her boyfriend to go see an indie rock band called Low Shoulder that is playing a pathetic little hick bar in their small town. Jennifer is more interested in hooking up with the band’s “salty” lead singer than she is interested in actually listening to their music.

Jennifer thinks she is going to get her wish after the band asks her to leave with them when the crumby bar burns down, but she’s really just playing into their evil hands. You see, Low Shoulder isn’t that great. They sound like all the other so-called indie rock bands that just want to make it big and live the lives of rock stars. They plan to sacrifice a virgin to the devil in exchange for fame and success. Boy, did they kidnap the wrong girl!

The band performs the satanic ritual on Jennifer, believing she is a virgin, which we now is not true from when she tells Needy she “isn’t even a backdoor virgin, thanks to Roman.” Several people die as a result of the bar fire and the town is deeply affected while Needy believes something bad has happened to Jennifer at the hand’s of the creepy band guys.

The quote about Jennifer not being a backdoor virgin is just one example of how Diablo Cody’s dialogue is the only thing that sets this movie apart from so many other mediocre movies from the teen horror genre. The dialogue is quick and creative like she wrote for Juno, but in Jennifer’s Body it is more explicit.

There are some funny scenes in Jennifer’s Body. Most of the humor is due to Cody’s writing. The teenage characters are written mostly as stereotypical high schoolers. J.K. Simmons is great as the school’s Mr. Wroblewski, a teacher with wild hair and only one hand. The other is replaced with a prosthetic hook.

It doesn’t take long before Jennifer seemingly returns from the dead. Jennifer immediately goes to Needy as if nothing is wrong, but Needy gets the feeling that something isn’t right from the moment Jennifer returns. As the town’s teenage boys begin turning up brutally murdered and partially eaten, Needy begins to suspect Jennifer is somehow connected.

The violence is OK in Jennifer’s Body. There’s a good amount of blood and gore, but it never really hits the level of nasty that it could have and probably should have. One thing the movie really lacked was any creativity or excitement during the kill scenes. Your standard Friday the 13th has far better kill scenes than Jennifer’s Body.

This is a disappointment because you have a hot teenage cheerleader possessed by a demon played by Megan Fox, speaking witty dialogue written by Diablo Cody in an R-rated teen horror film and yet, the kill scenes are kind of boring. It’s a waste of a perfect opportunity to spice things up.

Needy finds herself having to fight her demonic friend all by her nerdy self becoming a Buffy the Vampire Slayer type of character in the end. No one believes her that Jennifer is behind the killings and when she does finally kill her best friend it’s in the worst place at the worst time. Needy is on top of Jennifer in Jennifer’s bed, a big knife sticking out of Jennifer’s body covered in blood and in walks Jennifer’s mom. This brings the story full circle and we’re back in the mental asylum with Needy.

The ending of Jennifer’s Body does two things. It presents a twist that is kind of cool with Needy revealing that she’s inherited certain “abilities” from Jennifer by being bitten by a demon without dying. The other thing the ending does is potentially set us up for a sequel or a spin-off to Jennifer’s Body as Needy escapes the mental asylum using her new powers.

Jennifer’s Body isn’t all bad but it’s also not very good. The movie fails to achieve it’s true potential as an original teen supernatural horror flick and definitely rips the male viewing audience off after not making good on the promises made in the trailers. The dialogue from Diablo Cody is about the only thing that makes Jennifer’s Body worth seeing but I would hesitate seeing this movie in the theater. It’s much more of a rental for a movie night at home.

So there you have it boys and girls, without Diablo Cody’s dialogue the movie would be completely miserable and playing up the nudity aspect of Megan Fox is just a ploy to sell more movie tickets (not that I can blame them).