Jennifer’s Body

Considering that Oscar-winning screenwriter (for Juno) Diablo Cody serves as writer/producer here, it’s interesting that the dialogue and humor are the weakest aspects of this film … along with the sluggish pacing. A couple of moments build up to a nice, chilly effect, and then some character opens their mouth and spouts some self-aware clever line that totally undermines it. It isn’t horrible, though. Just got the vibe that with Cody as writer/producer, it wanted it to be something more than just another horror flick. It just couldn’t figure that out, so it fails at being whatever it was trying to figure out that it wanted to be, and fails as a horror film. Which is too bad. It’s neat to see the underlying misogyny of the genre subverted by having menfolk thrown up as mayhem-bait, but it falls into the same trap in still going after the low-hanging fruit of easy targets. The funny thing is that a sad share of folks going to see an R-rated Megan Fox movie called Jennifer’s Body ain’t gonna get their happy finish—no skin, no gore. Trimmed of the F-bombs, this would be PG-13. Feather River Cinemas, Paradise Cinema 7 and Tinseltown. Rated R.