Jennifer's Body

Year 16, Day 290 - 10/16/24 - Movie #4,875

BEFORE: I know, I know, I've done the math and now that we're halfway through October there are 76 days left in this year (it's a Leap Year, remember?) and only 25 movies left to watch. What the hell am I going to do for the other 51 days?  OK, a week's vacation , if you count both weekends that's 9 days, I've still got 42 days of NOT watching movies to fill up somehow.  OK, OK, I'll deal with all the weeds in the backyard and in the front planter, but that should only take me 2 days, tops. So I guess it's almost time to start catching up on all the TV I haven't been watching. 

A reminder that I'm shutting down for four days after this, because of New York Comic-Con - I'll basically live at the convention center from 10 am to 8 pm, come home and sleep and then just turn around and do that again.  It's only once a year, but I'm seriously getting way too old to maintain my own schedule. So I guess it's almost time to pull back somehow, either cut down on my hours worked or train someone else to do my Comic-Con magic.  Today was just the load-in day, all I had to do was get four boxes of merch, plus one banner, across 10 blocks of NYC from an animation studio to the convention center.  10 BLOCKS, and I was free to use any method available to me - walking, taking the subway, taking a cab, and I had one other person to help me.  I landed on: subway to the Convention Center (to get the move-in wristbands, since I couldn't get the badges today), walk 10 blocks back to the studio, use a cab to take the boxes over, and then walk those 10 blocks back again.  I was thorougly exhausted, and that's not a good sign heading into four full days of the same - except once I'm in, I do get to sit down a lot at the table, so really, maybe the worst part is already over, but then on Sunday there's the load-out, and I can't do that by myself either any more.  Whatever, I'll find a way to get it done, it's worth it if we have a lot of sales. 

Juan Riedinger, who played an assistant coroner working the late shift on Christmas Eve in "Black Christmas", carries over to play the very memorable (I'm sure) character "Dirk" today. 

THE PLOT: A newly-possessed high-school cheerleader turns into a succubus who specializes in killing her male classmates.Can her best friend put an end to the horror? 

AFTER: It's almost (not quite) the reverse of yesterday's movie, which featured a male serial killer taking the lives of many college sorority girls. This film flips that over, and has a female (possessed by a demon?) taking the lives of many high-school boys.  Still not cool, but at least it's got the female empowerment angle added. Is that a good thing? 

I'll admit I was confused a few times during this film's set-up, probably because I went in knowing just a bit too much about it.  Since I knew where the film was going, I guess maybe my brain got ahead of the plot, and so I assumed Jennifer was possessed at the start, which of course she wasn't.  Then when the fire started during the concert at the dive bar, and Jennifer seemed very out of it, I assumed that she had some kind of pyrokinetic power and SHE started the fire, but now I realize that wasn't the case. It was bad wiring on the band's equipment, combined with bad acting from Megan Fox. Why was her character nearly catatonic during this scene, was she enamored by the lead singer, transfixed by the band's music, or just incapable of expressing herself in that moment?  Sure, I could see if her character was in a state of shock after escaping the fire, but she kind of blanked out a few minutes before that, during the concert. So, what gives?  

It's important, because Jennifer then gets into a van with the members of the band Low Shoulder, and she seems unable to stop herself from joining them on a drive to nowhere.  But she HAD a ride home with her best friend, Anita ("Needy", which is quite a telling nickname...).  A teen girl should probably not get into a van with four strangers, right?  So why was Jennifer unable to stand up for herself in this moment?  

We don't find out exactly what happened to Jennifer that night until much later in the film, but she shows up at Needy's house, covered in blood and desperately hungry for any meat from the fridge, then she vomits up a horrible black liquid and flees, leaving Needy to clean up the mess.  Now again I made an incorrect assumption, I thought she killed the four band members and maybe at them, but I was getting ahead of the plot - so when the band appeared later in the film and they were very much alive, I was quite surprised, I thought they were dead and maybe nobody had found their bodies yet. These plot points could have been a lot clearer, that's what I mean to say.  

It turns out the band believed Jennifer when she said she was a virgin - she probably said that because she thought the band members all wanted to have sex with her, and if she said she was a virgin they might be less interested in her, due to a lack of sexual skills.  But it turns out this was a terrible plan, because the band was actually looking for a virgin, to sacrifice as part of an occult ritual.  Needy later figures out that if the virgin sacrifice was not really a virgin, then the dark rite would not have gone as planned, and instead of granting the band fame and fortune, a demon ended up in Jennifer's body.  And it's hungry for teen boys.

So Jennifer literally becomes a "man-killer" or let's say that the boys in school are dying to go out with her, whichever. When she kills a male classmate, and eats his flesh, she gains power and energy, she can heal very quickly and she's got a real glow to her - really, isn't this the most important thing for girls to think about, their appearance? Isn't a little murder here and there worth it if it makes her more attractive?  This is a very strange message to send out to the teens in the audience.

As for the kissing scene between the two lead female actresses, I'm not sure this is the empowering moment that the filmmakers thought it would be, especially if it was done just to appeal to the male audience.  Right idea, kind of the wrong result, or is that just me?  There should be more to female characters than performing just for the attention and fantasy fulfillment of the male audience, right?  Throughout the movie the boys and mean are kind of portrayed as weak and easily seduceable, it's too bad that tone couldn't be maintained for the whole film.

I knew the director of this film, Karyn Kusama, back at NYU. We were in the same comedy writing class together, but not in the same writing group - I think Karyn was on a writing team with the woman who later became my first wife, we met in that class and she sat down with me in the cafeteria one day and asked me how I got to be so brilliant.  Pretty good opening line.  I don't think there's much comedy in this movie, except when someone invites Jennifer on a date to see the "Rocky Horror Picture Show" and she says she doesn't like boxing movies. 

That's all I've got tonight, it's just another weird film, but aren't they all recently?  I've got to get up early tomorrow and start four days at Comic-Con, where there are other weird people dressed in weird costumes and doing weird things or going to panels about other weird movies and weird TV shows. 

Also starring Megan Fox (last seen in "Expend4bles"), Amanda Seyfried (last seen in "Mank"), Johnny Simmons (last seen in "The Phenom"), Adam Brody (last seen in "The Ring"), Sal Cortez, Ryan Levine (last seen in "Ghostbusters" (2016)), Colin Askey, Chris Pratt (last heard in "The Super Mario Bros. Movie"), Juno Ruddell (last seen in "It: Chapter Two"), Kyle Gallner (last seen in "Beautiful Creatures"), Josh Emerson, J.K. Simmons (last seen in "Ghostbusters: Afterlife"), Amy Sedaris (last seen in "Somebody I Used to Know"), Cynthia Stevenson, Nicole Leduc, Aman Johal (last seen in "Juno"), Dan Joffre (last seen in "A Guy Thing"), Candus Churchill (last seen in "Crash Pad"), Carrie Genzel (last seen in "The Layover"), Emma Gellello, Megan Charpentier (last seen in "Frankie & Alice"), Emily Tennant (ditto), Jeremy Schuetze, Valerie Tian, Karissa Tynes, Eve Harlow (last seen in "The Tomorrow Man"), Michael Brock, Genevieve Buechner (last seen in "The Final Cut"), Adrian Hough (last seen in "Things We Lost in the Fire"), Gabrielle Rose (last seen in "The Company You Keep"), Michael Bean (last seen in "Cold Pursuit"), Bill Fagerbakke (last seen in "The Meddler"), Marilyn Norry (last seen in "The Professor"), with cameos from Diablo Cody (last seen in "Ricki and the Flash"), Lance Henriksen (last seen in "Scream 3").

RATING: 4 out of 10 crime scene photos