Jennifer's Body - actually fairly good!

When I first heard about this film I thought myself "hmmm, exploitation". Billed as staring FHM's latest 'sexist woman ever' Meagan Fox as Jennifer, a high school cheerleader-type who is possessed by demons and starts seductively luring high school boys to their deaths, it was not hard to guess the market this was aimed at. At least that's what I had assumed. Reviews that came out were positive, so - as seems to be the case all the time these days - several months after the film came out I gave it a go.

Set in a small town with a high school and kids who conform to all the usual teen genre specifications, 'Jennifer's Body' isn't too forthcoming with information about its setting. It could be anywhere in America at any time in the last 10 years or into the near future. The town is visited by an emo band who want to "... support our fans in the shitty areas too" (that made me laugh out loud) and decide to engage in a spot of satanism to ensure their success. It's here that the many gaping plot holes begin: how does the fire in the music venue start and what causes Fox's character to become entranced by the band if have not invoked satan yet? Also - most glaring of all - what on earth makes the band members think Jennifer is a virgin? Anyway, decide she's a virgin they do; so they somehow hypnotise her into their van and try to sacrifice her to satan while her mate (Amanda Seyfried) goes home alone. It's here that the fun begins - only 15 minutes into the movie!

This all might seem silly and brainless, and one level it is - although for the Meagan Fox fanboys expecting to see plenty of flesh, there isn't as much of that as the trailors and posters made out - but I think there's something more subtle going on as well. There's a highschool-as-literal-hell metaphor in all this which is kind of lifted out of the Buffy mould (with plenty of Joss Wheedonesque valley girl teen talk). Jennifer is a high school girl who realises that she can be eternally pretty and youthful, but only by killing boys. Her friend realises her secret, but their friendship goes back to childhood and she can't bring herself to break the school yard code and tell on her. There seems to be a slightly odd understanding that goes on between them, that killing boys to look pretty isn't actually that bad as long as you only pick on the ones who were ogling you anyway.

In a way you might also think of the story as something of a teen-girl revenge thriller, in which the boys who expect the girls to look pretty pay the ultimate price for that conformity. I could well be reading too much into it, but it was written by the same woman who did 'Juno' so you might expect something more than a straight slasher movie. Something to think about anyway.

There are several things wrong with the film, I've mentioned a few of the plot holes already (another - why do the band not realise that something has gone wrong with their ritual when it turns out that Fox's character is not dead!) and it jumps right into the grisly stuff without giving the audience enough time to get to know the main characters, but it's a pretty good horror film with a couple of nice teenage years = hell metaphors going on. I was entertained, and you can't really ask for much more than that from a film billed as this was.