Film Review: Jennifer's Body (2009)

I was fully prepared to do nothing more than post hot provocative pics of Megan Fox for the majority of my review of the film...Jennifer's Body. I honestly thought that I would be watching an hour and a half of mindless stupidity slapped together to form some kind of entity that someone would call a film. I've had plenty of opportunities to check out this film and passed on it all of those times. I seriously thought that I was going to use the word "suck" more often in this review than adult actress Bree Olson does in her films. I was convinced that I would not use one single favorable word in this review for anything other than describing Megan Fox's ass.

I was absolutely wrong on every presumption I had going into this film. Now, while I'm not exactly proclaiming Jennifer's Body to be my favorite horror film of 2009 (an honor bestowed upon The House of the Devil).....it was certainly a good solid effort deserving of my recommendation.

Jennifer's Body is fully aware of what it is and never tries to sell itself as anything more. In fact, the film's biggest flaw was that it had so much potential to be so much more. I felt like there was such a great movie lurking under all that annoying Diablo Cody dialogue. It had so many different elements going for it...I felt like it should have focused more on one element as an anchor to the film and branched out into other elements. The film suffers from not knowing its true identity. Is it a teen comedy? Is it a metaphor? Is it a friend movie? Is it a dramedy? Is it a horror film?

Personally...as a fan of horror...I wanted there to be much more kills than there was. I wanted the body count in this film to be stacked high. I wanted the gore to fill the screen....even though there is a satisfactory amount of blood shed. I just wanted more and felt like there very well could have been.

Megan Fox is actually pretty good here doing her "sexy as fuck" thing here along with a little sexual demonic menace sprinkled in for good atmospheric measure. And Amanda Seyfried does a fine job of balancing out her "goody goody" friend with a bit of psychotic obsession that makes the film viewable under a different point of view. Without spoiling anything...if you were to watch the film...not as a demonic horror movie...but, almost as a psychological thriller....it almost works better.

Adam Brody is the stand-out performance in this film. I love when actors have fun with their roles...and this guy plays the evil band leader guy to such perfection....even tho he gets like 10 minutes of actual screen time.

Karyn Kasuma does an expert job of directing and I loved some of the more expansive scenes she shot. There's a few really nice epic shots that make the film look much better than it is. I hope she gets a chance to direct more films in the future in the genre to really prove what she can do.

I know I'm going to get a bit of shit from the astute horror movie fans...but, I was a big fan of the film Heathers....and if you guys like your horror mixed in with alot of Heathers...then, you'll dig this film. I think there was way too much hatin' goin' on over Diablo Cody for anyone to truly appreciate this film for what it was. If there's nothing else available and you want a really solid date movie that doesn't involve a complicated tightly written script.....I would reccommend Jennifer's Body.

It's better than you might think.

7 out of 10.

Thanks for reading,

bryan.