Retro Review: ‘Jennifer’s Body’

Director: Karyn Kusama

Cast: Megan Fox, Amanda Seyfred, Johnny Simmons, Adam Brody

Review: Diablo Cody, scriptress behind Juno and United States of Tara, completely fails to add any of her usual wit or spark to this tired and ultimately pointless horror/comedy. Telling the story of a high-school cheerleader named Jennifer (Fox) who, through a botched Satanic ritual, winds up being possessed by the worlds most boring demon with only her nerdy BFF (Seyfred) joining the dots between her and the series of horrific murders occurring throughout town.

None of the characters are the slightest bit interesting. Even those who aren’t simple cliches are paper thin and frequently act without motive. Letting down an already weak team is Megan Fox, proving herself unable to carry a film. Her dead eyed delivering of the weak script wastes the opportunity to cut loose. The concept of a demonic cheerleader has plenty of potential for lunacy, yet Fox produces a performance capable of inducing sleep.

These weak performances are heaped on top of a mishandled pro-feminist message, some of the worlds most awkward clothes-on sex scenes, unfunny jokes and gory, rock music backed murders that fail to raise a pulse let alone a scare. When the movie finally crawls to a limp, boring climax it rubs salt in the wound by pointlessly tacking on a useless twist and credits epilogue to fill out one of manner plot holes.

I was almost tempted to cut it some slack because it is a decent looking production, but it fails on so many levels there’s not much point. No wonder it went straight to DVD.

Score: TWO outta TEN