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Jennifer's Body
USA 2009
Director: Karyn Kusama
With Megan Fox, Amanda Seyfried, Johnny Simmons J.K. Simmons
Certificate 15 102m 14s
Jennifer's Body centres on the toxic relationship between high-school hottie Jennifer (Megan Fox) and dweeby friend Anita 'Needy' Lesnicki (Amanda Sëyfried); Jennifer's transformation into a demonically possessed literal man-eater merely accentuates the uneven power balance. Such is the basic metaphor of screenwriter Diablo Cody's much-hyped Juno follow-up, which attempts to meld horror-comedy with the clearly established rules of the high-school movie. Despite its numerous flaws, Juno was at least clear on what it was about and what each scene was intended to do. Jennifer's Body is surprisingly shoddy, oddly low on incident and shaky on characterisation; it feels like a mistakenly filmed first draft.
Jennifer and Needy's friendship dates back to the sandbox (shown in cheesy flashback), but it's never believable or organic; even before her transformation into cannibalistic succubus, Jennifer's treatment of her 'friend' is beyond contemptuous. Cody's low character count means that Jennifer...