This week I watched Jennifer's Body. According to IMDb.com the movie plot is; A newly possessed cheerleader turns into a killer who specializes in offing her male classmates. Can her best friend put an end to the horror?
It stars Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried. It was written by Diablo Cody, who also wrote Juno. When the movie came out it got a lot of mixed reviews, most of them bad. Probably because critics and viewers were expecting Juno with a horror twist.Maybe baby drama were the baby turns out to be a demonic entity instead?
However, I found the movie to be satisfying, not the best horror I've seen but neither the worst. How much I enjoyed it really surprised me since normally I can't really stand Megan Fox, her "acting" in Transformers and her comments in real life makes me cringe each and every time, but in this movie I didn't mind her at all. This might have to do with the fact that Fox's portrayal of Jennifer seems to be Fox playing herself but with wittier lines, courtesy of Cody.
However, I think it was Amanda Seyfried's portrayal of Needy that really pulled together the movie. Seyfried's Needy is never weak, stupid or a stereotypical horror blond bombshell, instead Diablo Cody and Seyfried give us a character that is very much an average teenage girl that is put in a very extreme situation by her "sand box" best friend Jennifer. They also lets us know not only how these experiences changed her but also how much. Seyfried's transformation from sidekick to slayer doesn't seem to far fetched.
Both Jennifer and Needy divergent journeys and turbulent friendship can be seen as a very plausible metaphor for the trials and tribulations teenage girls go thorough every day, both individually and together. The plot of the movie can be seen as a extreme example of what can happen when two people, who have been best friends since forever, grow apart. In real life, this would probably end with talking behind each others backs, fights and facebook de-friending, but in Cody's world we get demon possession and murder.
Another aspect of the movie is that it can be seen as an extreme example of what can happen after a female, in this instance Jennifer, is sexually brutalized and victimized, as Jennifer was by the band.
It also has not so subtle overtones as being a metaphor for both female sexual liberation, such as Needy losing her virginity and Jennifer luring the boys (a.k.a. her food) by using sex as power.
All in all, it was a good movie.
Legion (2010)
This weekend I went to see Legion. According to IMDb.com the plot is "An out-of-the-way diner becomes the unlikely battleground for the survival of the human race. When God loses faith in humankind, he sends his legion of angels to bring on the Apocalypse. Humanity's only hope lies in a group of strangers trapped in a desert diner with the Archangel Michael"
I loved the trailer and the idea of this movie. I mean in a world that seems to be getting more and more violent and twisted every day the whole idea of God losing faith isn't so far fetched. I also thought that it would be interesting to see what that would entail, for example; demon possession, crazy old ladies climbing the walls while cursing and gore, lots of gore. I have to admit that some parts of the movie was funny, gory and a little bit creepy. However, the two biggest problems of the movie was;
In the end I wish they would've gone more in depth on some of the more crucial subjects of the movie, such as why God lost faith, why this particular baby is important and what happens in the world after the apocalypse comes along.
What we get, however, is kind of a shallow movie that only scratches the surface, cool fighting between the two angels Michael (Paul Bettany) and Gabriel (Kevin Durand), and some pretty awesome acting by Dennis Quaid and Charles S. Dutton.
I guess I have to stick to my weekly episodes of Supernatural to get my fix on in-depth analysis of urban legends, myths, beliefs, pop culture and religion.
I loved the trailer and the idea of this movie. I mean in a world that seems to be getting more and more violent and twisted every day the whole idea of God losing faith isn't so far fetched. I also thought that it would be interesting to see what that would entail, for example; demon possession, crazy old ladies climbing the walls while cursing and gore, lots of gore. I have to admit that some parts of the movie was funny, gory and a little bit creepy. However, the two biggest problems of the movie was;
- I didn't really care for the main characters. They felt two dimensional, shallowly written and extremely stupid. I mean the one character that was suppose to be the hope of humanity is a girl who got pregnant by one guy, strings another guy along for the ride and smokes while pregnant, it is like the writers couldn't decide which character flaw to give her so they gave her all of them. They also named one of the characters Jeep, which just sounds like a product placement to me because who really names their kids Jeep? At least name him Bentley, Royce or Ford!
- It felt like I was watching a movie trying to hard to be Terminator with the whole "your baby has a destiny". Seriously, I was just waiting for them to name the kid John Connor. Maybe the makers of the movie thought that, like fashion, every 20 years we need to recycle, readjust and remake the movies of our earlier years to fit how they view the world now.
In the end I wish they would've gone more in depth on some of the more crucial subjects of the movie, such as why God lost faith, why this particular baby is important and what happens in the world after the apocalypse comes along.
What we get, however, is kind of a shallow movie that only scratches the surface, cool fighting between the two angels Michael (Paul Bettany) and Gabriel (Kevin Durand), and some pretty awesome acting by Dennis Quaid and Charles S. Dutton.
I guess I have to stick to my weekly episodes of Supernatural to get my fix on in-depth analysis of urban legends, myths, beliefs, pop culture and religion.
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