Monday, September 7

• The Trojan Horse Inside Jennifer's Body

  Puzzling over the newfound box-office success of horror flicks with female audiences, the New York Times looks into what's happening with Jennifer's Body. With its theme of demon-assisted vengeance of a woman done wrong, the movie is making a fairly obvious play for the women in the audience. It allows women, as the paper puts it, to "take back the knife."

  Beyond that, the movie's creators tell the Times that they set out from the beginning to insert some feminist themes without sabotaging the movie's appeal for 15-year-old boys. By sticking to the tried-and-true genre formula of "screams, skin and death" — and having Megan Fox play Jennifer — an audience of young boys seems pretty much guaranteed. As for the feminists, writer Diablo Cody explains:

  The tricky thing is if you're going to subvert [the sex and violence], they have to be there.... We were constantly bobbing and weaving. [Director Karyn Kusama] and I talk about the film as a kind of Trojan horse. We wanted to package our beliefs in a way that's appealing to a mainstream audience.

  They were, she says, under a lot of pressure to give up the feminist subtext and just make a straight horror film, but ultimately her original script survived more or less intact, Trojan horse and all.

  
  

  Posted 09/07/2009 by Bill

  Related: Megan Fox | Karyn Kusama | Diablo Cody | Jennifer's Body

Monday, August 3

• Fine Tuning the Horror in Jennifer's Body

  In an extended interview with Fangoria, filmmakers explained to horror fans just how Jennifer's Body fits into the genre. The movie follows a young beauty who, after a botched satanic sacrifice, ends up possessed by a demon with a real taste for boys.

  Although Jennifer's Body follows many of the tropes of classic horror movies, it's the filmmakers' maiden voyage into the genre and really isn't all about the gore. Rather, director Karyn Kusama explains, they are looking to strike the right balance between horror, humor, and character:

  ... you definitely have to walk a fine line between the loose, comic high school relationship moments and the story's more legitimate suspense and horror elements ... what it all boils down to is finding the right emotional hooks between the characters and finding what feels true to the teenagers.

  Producer Daniel Dubiecki adds:

  This is really a character movie, a relationship film about these two girls.... They were best friends when they were little kids ... Things have changed between them, and they are going through a dynamic where this friendship is coming to an end.

  Of course, the movie serves up plenty of gore as well. For a preview of that side of the movie, just check out the still of Jennifer's leftovers accompanying the article. Because of scenes like this, there will be no PG-13 cut of the film, Dubiecki insists.

  Still, Kusama says, they tried to take a more subtle approach with some aspects Jennifer's demon:

  When she doesn't feed and grows hungry, she starts to physically deteriorate. But because she's Megan Fox — or because she's the famous Jennifer Check of Devil's Kettle, Minnesota — her version of deteriorating involves just starting to look a little bit more like a lot of girls. [Make-up/prosthetics atrist Greg Nicotero] is really good at helping guide us toward a look that's subtle, but definitely different from how Megan appears when she's looking like a million bucks.... There's just a coolness to it, to me that you can watch this beautiful girl at a stage where sometimes her hair is falling out, or her skin isn't perfectly porcelain, or her eyes are kind of bloodshot, or her teeth get a little dirty.

  Definitely a complex and ambitious set of goals, but if they can pull it all off, Jennifer's Body may just turn out to be one demon flick whose beauty is more than skin deep.

  
  

  Posted 08/03/2009 by Bill

  Related: Megan Fox | Karyn Kusama | Greg Nicotero | Daniel Dubiecki | Jennifer's Body

Monday, July 27

• Megan Fox Says Jennifer's Body Will Spotlight Her Acting Ability

  

  Actress Megan Fox scoffed when reporters asked her about the possibility of playing a superhero in a live-action Wonder Woman movie, but apparently playing a zombie wasn't beneath her consideration. Perhaps that's because she found the role to be so unlike the decidedly un-sexy zombies to appear on screen in previous movies.

  In the still-in-production comedy-horror movie Jennifer's Body, Fox plays a cheerleader who returns from the dead as a zombie to feast on her former classmates. In a recent interview, Fox said that zombies can be "sexy" and that there was a lot of eroticism in the movie:

  Fox was criticized for being so critical of Transformers, the franchise that made her famous. She contrasts her new movie with Transformers, saying that she has more opportunities to act in Jennifer's Body:

  There are no robots to distract you from whatever performance I give, so if it's terrible you will know. But the character was so much fun. I felt I was being able to make fun of my own image.

  Jennifer's Body is currently in production, with Karyn Kusama (Æon Flux) directing from a script by Diablo Cody (Juno). If a zombie revenge movie seems a strange thing for the indie darling to write after the heartfelt tale of Juno MacGuff, think again. Cody told Entertainment Weekly:

  I was involved in a typical adolescent love triangle, and I found myself having incredibly violent thoughts about this other girl.

  
  
  

  Jennifer's Body - Trailer

  A popular high school girl is really an evil killer with supernatural powers

  Posted 07/27/2009 by BrentJS

  Related: Megan Fox | Karyn Kusama | Diablo Cody | Transformers | Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen | Jennifer's Body | Juno | Aeon Flux

Friday, July 24

• Jennifer's Body Aims For "Delightfully Exploitative" Feminism

  

  The first 15 minutes of Jennifer's Body got screened at Comic-Con, followed by a press conference with star Megan Fox, director Karyn Kusama, writer Diablo Cody, and producer Jason Reitman. Sadly, the footage has not made its way onto the net, but all sorts of interesting details about the plot and direction of the movie were revealed.

  From the red-band trailer, it was quite evident that however hot Jennifer might be on the outside, she was harboring a demon under her skin. Now we know why. It was a virgin sacrifice gone awry, not least because she didn't exactly meet the job requirements. After that, it's a not-so-straight-up combination of a woman-done-wrong revenge flick and sexy, bloody horror.

  Megan Fox seemed to particularly relish the contrast from her role in Transformers, and was dropping f-bombs left and right. About her new role she says:

  This movie gets so sexy! You better put on your f***in' sexy shoes for this one. Before every kill, there is a seduction because these boys have to get close enough to this dead girl for her to devour them. And I think I'm pretty sexy in it.

  With the male body count piling higher and higher, filmmakers insist that the movie has a feminist message. Of course, it manages to be, as they put it, "delightfully exploitative" along the way.

  
  

  Posted 07/24/2009 by Bill

  Related: Jason Reitman | Megan Fox | Karyn Kusama | Diablo Cody | Jennifer's Body