I\u2019m sitting here watching Jennifer\u2019s Body<\/a><\/em>, which is a movie I should love. I think the concept is amazing \u2013 a girl who gets taken advantage of by men only to turn the tables and start fucking over men. It should be edgy, fucking hilarious, scary as shit and I was expecting this movie to rock my afternoon. <\/p>\n

This movie is totally unwatchable (despite a really great opening line). Megan Fox actually looks uncomfortable saying Diablo Cody’s lines (sad, so sad). I am so disappointed that the director missed the obvious: there is something infinitely amazing-hilarious-wonderful about having “the hot girl” look and act completely disgusting. I mean, in this movie, Megan Fox is a parody of herself. This could have been golden. I myself feel like puking up a waterfall of blood that this material was so mistreated. <\/p>\n

I\u2019m not going to finish it. I started fast-forwarding at about the 10 minute mark. Um, what the hell happened?<\/p>\n

I think this is a really great example of genre gone wrong. <\/p>\n

The logline 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?” <\/p>\n

It is listed as a horror\/comedy, which would be perfectly fine if it were either funny or scary. It\u2019s neither. It\u2019s floating somewhere in the purgatory of absolutely not funny, absolutely not scary, and because it solidly misses both of those marks, the other things that it does pretty well \u2013 chatty, self-absorbed teens lamenting their teenness and teen milktoast \u2013 don\u2019t really matter because that\u2019s not what the core story is about. <\/p>\n

It feels to me like this director disdains horror and isn\u2019t funny. I’ve been a victim to that as well – I had a comedy short directed by a woman who wasn’t funny, the director wanted to take out all the comedic elements because I think they embarrassed her, and *poof* my really funny short turned into a piece of shit. <\/p>\n

Despite what may have been on the page, or what could have been created with a broader vision from what was on the page, this movie weighs a little like a John Hughes movie, but it\u2019s not a teen drama! It\u2019s a dark, edgy, ironic commentary on the shit that teen girls and women have to go through. This story is dense with social criticism and I think could have been amazing – something akin to this generation’s Heathers<\/em> – but, no. I’m actually saddened by the waste of material, and the fact is, because this movie did poorly at the box office, the next project of this tone will be harder to get funded and produced. <\/p>\n

It is essential in your writing to fulfill the primary genre conventions, and then if you\u2019re adding another genre into the mix, also to fulfill those conventions as well. That\u2019s why mixing genres is more difficult than writing just one genre \u2013 you have to hit the conventions of both genres, and it\u2019s hard to do well. If you\u2019re writing a horror and then want it to be a comedy, it\u2019s imperative that you start solidly with a horror movie and then make sure that you\u2019re layering comedy elements into it that are actually funny and make the audience laugh. <\/p>\n

I actually would be very interested to pop into Diablo Cody\u2019s head for a few minutes and see what she envisioned when she was writing this piece, because my sense is this material could have been executed in a way that was contemporary, edgy and intelligent \u2013 as well as scary and funny \u2013 instead of being self-consciously serious and with please-shoot-me-now-and-put-me-out-of-my-misery slow pacing.<\/p>\n

In reference to this film, I think the filmmakers also missed an important point: remember who you\u2019re writing for.<\/a> I would assume that this movie was supposedly intended for the teen and college audience. But, who thinks that extremely slow pacing, dulled edge, and mamby-pamby would have captured the attention of today’s youth when they’re the \u201cA for effort!\u201d and immediate gratification generation? (No offense.) Write to your audience. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019m sitting here watching Jennifer\u2019s Body, which is a movie I should love. I think the concept is amazing \u2013 a girl who gets taken advantage of by men only to turn the tables and start fucking over men. It should be edgy, fucking hilarious, scary as shit and I was expecting this movie to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[81,9,7,10,6,50,42,44,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.screenwriter-to-screenwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.screenwriter-to-screenwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.screenwriter-to-screenwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.screenwriter-to-screenwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.screenwriter-to-screenwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=611"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.screenwriter-to-screenwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":666,"href":"http:\/\/www.screenwriter-to-screenwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/611\/revisions\/666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.screenwriter-to-screenwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.screenwriter-to-screenwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.screenwriter-to-screenwriter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}