NOBODY can accuse Oscar-winning screenwriter Diablo Cody of trying to top “Juno” with the light-on-scares horror spoof “Jennifer’s Body,” though fans of the amply displayed Megan Fox will probably not be asking for their money back.
The “Transformers” hottie undergoes her very own transformation here, thanks to satanic possession.
“She’s really evil, not high school evil,” helpfully explains a friend in a typically snarky line from Cody, who opens with “Hell is a teenage girl.”
Megan Fox in Wonderland Magazine
The narrator is the aptly named Needy (a glammed-down Amanda Seyfried of “Mamma Mia!”) to whom we are introduced as a violent inmate in a mental institution.
In flashbacks, we see Needy assigned herself the impossible task of trying to keep her bitchy and gorgeous BFF Jennifer (Fox) from getting into trouble in their small town of Devil’s Kettle.
A trip to a bar, for instance, ends with the place burning down with many fatalities — and with Jennifer leaving in a van with a skeevy rock band whose members plan to sacrifice her in a satanic ritual.
Unfortunately, our heroine has lied about being a virgin.
So Jennifer turns up on poor Needy’s doorstep dripping blood, vomiting black goo and acting allegedly scary.
She’s her voluptuous self in school the next morning, but her new beauty routine requires her to use her seductiveness to literally eat her way through the male student body.
Needy eventually figures out that Jennifer is planning a “buffet” for herself at the prom, with Needy’s boyfriend (Adam Brody) as the main course. As in “Juno,” the script is larded with pop culture references, as well as many sexual double-entendres and lines like, “Enough with the screaming, you’re such a cliché.”
Indeed, there’s nothing we haven’t seen here before, even if it is from a more specifically female-centric point of view.
The film is sharply photographed and brisky directed by Karyn Kusama (“Girlfight” and the abysmal “Aeon Flux”), who encourages Fox and the rest of the cast to chew the scenery and everything else that isn’t nailed down.
While she’s more interested in laughs than suspense or scares, gorehounds and admirers of the pinup star will not go home disappointed.
Especially when Fox and Seyfried, who are not exactly taxed in the acting department, share a lengthy lip-lock.
J.K. Simmons, who played the father in “Juno,” turns up as a teacher in “Jennifer’s Body” with an Irish accent, a prosthetic arm and a wig that makes him resemble the late director Sydney Pollack.
Now that’s scary.