Followed a botched attempt at a human sacrifice, high school queen Jennifer (Megan Fox) becomes a succubus, satiating her appetite on the flesh of her school’s male population. The only person who can stop her is her best friend Needy (Amanda Seyfried), whose boyfriend is lining up to be Jennifer’s next meal.

CRITIQUE

You could argue that I was predisposed to hate Jennifer’s Body. I absolutely hate Juno, and the primary reason I hate is the script. I know it turned Diablo Cody (not her real name) into something of a wunderkind wordsmith and won her an Oscar (which I still think should have gone to Tony Gilroy), but I found it to be arch, self-satisfied, and annoyingly precious (look--she’s using a hamburger phone! Listen--now she’s telling us she’s using a hamburger phone!).

And all of that, ahem, stylized dialogue didn’t help; it struck me as being completely unnatural and did little more than call attention to itself. And while I know it’s fashionable to bash any movie, book, album, or television series that’s popular and/or acclaimed, that’s my genuine feeling, not simply bandwagon-jumping.

Anyway, while I can’t say I was undoubtedly going to hate Jennifer’s Body, I did doubt it would be good, what it with being a collaboration between the writer of a movie I loathe and a director--in this case Karyn Kusama--whose first movie--that being girlfight--looks more and more like a fluke with each subsequent effort (I’m starting to dislike Aeon Flux almost as much as Peter Chung does). And good it’s not.

Cody’s script--which wants to be a comedy, a horror tale, and a satire on the petty competitiveness of high school girls but ends up failing on all counts--is rambling and unfocused (it was reportedly rewritten quite a bit during production, which probably didn’t help), Kusama’s direction lacks the visual flair and energy the material requires, and Fox (who looks about as much like a high school senior as Mickey Rooney) once and for all proves she can’t blame her acting deficiencies on Michael Bay. But worst of all, the movie is the one thing no story should ever be: boring--very boring.

It took me about five minutes to realize I was going to hate Juno (I think it was the moment I realized everyone sounded like someone in a hip indie flick), and it took me about the same amount of time to realize I was indeed going to dislike this movie. Naming a character Needy? Really? How meta--and by meta I mean lazy and obvious. If you’re going to go down that road, why not just get it over with and name Fox’s character Takey? Or name the four prominent male characters Dopey, Dopey, Dopey, and Dopey (which is exactly what they are)? Yeah, it’s a satire (or at least allegedly one), so some name-play is to be expected, but compare Needy to Buck Turgidson (or even Dr. Beeper or Lacy Underall) and you’ll see what I mean.

Cody’s dialogue has (inevitably) been compared to that of Quentin Tarantino, Kevin Smith, and David Mamet. Her proponents wonder why her detractors don’t also level the same complaints against those three filmmakers, often playing the sexism card. That’s a minefield I don’t care to traverse, but I will say that for me it comes down to tone.

If you’re going to write dialogue that doesn’t sound as if it’s coming out of the mouth of your average human being (although in the case of Smith, it certainly sounds as if it’s coming out of the mouths of people I know), it has to be delivered in way that doesn’t make it sound unnatural at the time. It’s a very tricky thing, making stylized dialogue work; it has to be heard and processed without ruining the moment by calling attention to itself.

Cody’s slang and pop-culture references always stick out; they may work in her head, but they’re like fingernails on a blackboard when they’re actually spoken (especially by Fox, who simply doesn’t get it) or played out (the hamburger phone bit from Juno is outdone here by the use of Tommy Tutone’s signature song during the sacrifice). But I think I’m beginning to understand why Cody relies on such dialogue--she’s even worse when it comes to exposition.

Jennifer’s Body is decidedly more plot-driven than Juno, meaning the characters actually have to talk about what’s going on around them; when they do (such as in the awful explanation of just what happened to Jennifer during the attempted sacrifice), the movie comes to dead stop. Combine the stylized bits the cast cannot handle with the long, deadly stretches of exposition and you get a whole lot of talk that goes nowhere and adds up to nothing.

As if everyone watching couldn’t have figured it out for themselves, this movie’s enormous debt to The Evil Dead and its sequels is pointed out by the inclusion of a lobby card for that movie, which can be seen hanging on a wall in Needy’s bedroom. Unfortunately, Cody and Kusama failed to realize one of the big reasons those movies work: finding the right tone (there’s that word again) and sticking with it.

Jennifer’s Body has a tone, but it’s the wrong one, seeing as how flat is not how this material should be played. The humor, horror, and satiric jabs and barbs are (for the most part) delivered in the same dull, lifeless manner. I certainly don’t think Raimi’s manic Three Stooges/Looney Toons combination would be appropriate here, but it at least would have been more interesting than Kusama’s lifelessly leaden approach. (Considering just how lifelessly leaden her approach is, it would have been more appropriate for Needy to hang a lobby card for Scenes From a Marriage on her wall.)

Further, as she proved with Aeon Flux, Kusama’s skills don’t lend themselves to action or suspense (which raises the question of why she was hired for this gig in the first place). There’s a sequence here in which Needy almost runs down Jennifer with a car, and the staging, blocking, and editing are terrible. Even a sequence as simple as Needy walking through her house and opening and closing doors (yes, another one of those scenes) is muffed; it’s about as suspenseful as watching someone search for a box of Kleenex. And you can pretty much guess what Kusama does with the big setpiece at the end. (If you guessed “nothing,” pat yourself on the back.)

There’s one brief sequence where the movie comes alive, and it’s the coda. I don’t want to reveal too much, but it involves a montage of DV footage, surveillance video, and freeze frames, much of it set to Hole’s “Violet.” It’s pretty damn fantastic, accomplishing in a span of about four minutes what the first ninety-eight failed to do. (You’d think making a good movie would be an easier task than making good use of something written by Courtney Love, but whatever.)

Aside from that, the movie’s only pluses are appearances by Amy Sedaris (who gets far too little screen time) and J.K. Simmons (who seems to be the only person involved who truly understands how the material should be played), and some good work from Seyfried (although her attempts to make up for Fox is a little like trying to put out a burning skyscraper with a Super Soaker). Oh, and there is one good joke about anal sex, which is somehow made funnier by Fox’s stone-faced delivery.

This release contains both the theatrical cut of the movie and an unrated version. That doesn’t mean you get footage of a naked Fox or more girl-on-girl action (considering the purported point of the story, does anyone else find it odd how prominently that bit was featured in the movie’s advertising?), although at this point that’s about all that would help the movie turn a profit.

In fact, what you’ll find here is the version Kusama had locked before test audiences had their way with the movie. It runs about four minutes longer, with much of the added footage consisting of small bits intended to amp up the movie’s, as Kusama put it, freak factor (which only makes everything seem that much more confused); there’s also a slight reordering of a small amount of footage.

THE VIDEO

This release’s 1.85:1/1080p transfer--encoded with AVC onto a 50GB disc--is close to perfect. There’s nothing terribly stylized about the movie’s cinematography, although some of the bolder primary colors in a few of the exterior shots look to have been tweaked just a bit (likely to provide contrast to the dark scenes that dominate). Black levels are rock solid, and the image is consistently smooth, detailed, and film-like (enhanced by a fine layer of grain that actually looks like grain). The only problem I noticed during the entire runtime was a bit of jitter during a downward-booming crane shot.

THE AUDIO

The sound design falls back on the same clichés most modern horror flicks favor, and the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track included here makes the most of it. The mix is active and atmospheric, the music sounds great, and the low end thunders. Dialogue generally comes through clearly, although a few lines here and there do get muffled.

French, Portuguese, and Spanish Dolby Digital 5.1 tracks are also included; English SDH, Cantonese, Mandarin, Portuguese, Spanish, and Thai subtitles are available.

THE EXTRAS

The theatrical version is graced with a commentary by Karyn Kusama and Diablo Cody. It’s an extremely spotty track, featuring far more dead space than actual talk; what little talk there is focuses on the movie’s satirical and postmodern content (which eventually comes across as a way of trying to prove it’s there).

Kusama also provides a scene-specific commentary for the unrated cut, outlining the differences between the two versions and explaining why the material was later cut and what she had originally hoped to achieve with its inclusion.

Six deleted scenes (14 minutes, HD), half of which are actually extended scenes, are also included. I’d wager they were cut for pacing, although at least two may have been excised because they contain rather blatant lifts from Carrie (not that anyone should worry about Brian De Palma accusing anyone else of theft).

Jennifer’s Body: The Dead Pool (14 minutes, HD) focuses primarily on the various aspects of the planning and shooting of a big showdown near the end of the movie, but also touches on the movie’s themes, cast, etc. 

Video Diaries (13 Minutes, HD) is a compilation of behind-the-scenes footage shot by Cody and the movie’s lead actors.

Life after Film School with Writer Diablo Cody (26 minutes, SD), which was originally broadcast on the Fox Movie Channel, features Cody fielding questions from a trio of film school students.

A gag reel (5 minutes, SD) is actually your typical gag reel augmented with some unrelated behind-the-scenes footage.

Megan Fox is Hot (1 minute, HD) is a montage of short clips of Fox being all sexy and stuff. (No, I’m not kidding. Again, this is a selling point for this movie? Geez.)

Peer Pressure PSA (1 minute, SD) is the well-known promotional gag that hit the ‘net a few months before the movie’s release.

A second disc houses a digital copy of the theatrical cut.

FINAL THOUGHTS