Review of Jennifer's Body (2009) by Daniel M — 16 Jan 2015

A fun, underrated dark comedy. Lots of clever dialog, and an interesting setup, focusing on something I've never seen in a movie before: a hostile friend. One that seems like your friend, but tries to control everything you do, and gets angry (and possibly violent) when you don't play along. It's almost like an abusive spouse, only it's a friend. It does happen, especially as children/teens, but I've never seen it in a movie before.

The teen angst/romance scenes can go on a bit long, but it plays out less like a cheap horror film and more like a modern update on Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Overall, I really liked it, but it did have two problems: Megan Fox, and a lack of Megan Fox.

First, Megan Fox's acting performance was beyond terrible. The woman may be gorgeous, but she couldn't convey a real emotion if her life depended on it. She's like a cross between a super model and a Speak-and-Spell. Luckily, Amanda Seyfried makes up for her ineptitude by doing a nice job at doing all the acting in the movie.

As for 'a lack of Megan Fox', anyone attracted to women probably wants to see a lot of 'Jennifer's Body', but the movie falls way too short in that respect. There's only one scene where Megan Fox comes anywhere close to nudity (unzips shirt to show cleavage), and another scene where she kisses with Amanda Seyfried, but that's it. The movie was marketed around Megan Fox's looks, but you honestly see more of her in Transformers as she's looking under the hood of a car. Google the behind the scenes footage if that's what you want to see, because there isn't much of it at all in the actual movie.

Overall, I enjoyed it, but the movie needed a much better actress than Megan Fox to pull off the mean friend/succubus part well. Still, I think it's a good movie.