Jennifer's Body

Seen at: Elvis Arvada 8, evening of Oct. 27.

It was interesting to see this movie later in the day after Tyler Perry's latest movie, because both had a lot to do with contemporary spirituality. Whereas I Can Do Bad All By Myself was partly about the struggle to incorporate Christianity into modern life, in particular among the urban black community, Jennifer's Body focused on the prevalence of Satanism in small town and suburban white America, at least as Hollywood sees it.

Satanism, you say? Really? Well, yes, Satanism has indeed become the dominant religion of America as depicted in the mirror that Hollywood wants to hold up to us (whether it's true or not is a different story). Many people think our national "movie world" religion is bland agnosticism coated with Christian tradition (like Christmas trees, etc.), but this is false and I can prove it.

In the eyes of Hollywood (outside of a few film makers like Perry), Christianity is utterly dead. No one except religious freaks believes in Jesus anymore, and they are given no quarter in mainstream Hollywood. But what we should believe in, according to Hollywood, is every story about demons rising from hell and taking possession of people. We must believe in every occult legend about paranormal evil spiritual power wreaking havoc in our lives. A quick survey of the recent horror movies will prove my point.

This, my friends, is exactly what Satanism is about---the belief in the dominance of evil spirtual forces in the material world and the impotence of any prevailing idea of good.

Jennifer's Body tackles this head on in the first scene. The heroine, a high school girl, is locked inside a mental institution. We will soon go back in time to find out how she got there, but before we do, in her opening lines, she explicitly denies the power of Jesus to help her. Above all, this is a movie about hopelessness.

I really expected to hate this movie walking into, but I was suprised at how much I enjoyed most it. The story was different that I expected,not your run-of-the-mill horror cliches. I didn't realize unitl the end that is was written by Diablo Cody, the ex-stripper who won and Academy Award for her original screenplay of Juno.

But Juno is light-hearted and life-affirming. Jennifer's Body is very dark, and it just keeps getting darker all the way through. On the surface, there is nothing wrong with such darkness on screen, but the story just takes us to places that really made me wonder about the sanity and intentions of those who made this.

Basically in the final minutes, and over the closing credits, the story puts the viewer in sympathy with a psychotic killer who commits a ritual mass satantic killing in a hotel room. We are supposed to be on her side, because it is righteous revenge.

This is exactly the natural and logical culmination of the Satanist instinct---the moral justification of mass murder out of sense that the victims deserved it in some unforgivable way.

On bright side---and I can't believe I'm saying this---I actually enjoyed the performance of Megan Fox. She and Cody should work together more often. For once, I thought Fox was well cast and turned in a decent performance. Her character turns out to be much more sympathetic than you'd expect from the trailer---as much a victim as anyone else. This facet of the story is probably what kept it interesting, and from being swallowed completely by the darkness.

Speaking of darkness, I almost got swallowed up by it myself on the way home from Arvada, in the weirdest freakiest early season snowfall ever in Colorado. The only thing that kept me from running off the road were the tail lights of the cars in front of me. Thank you, Jesus!

Verdict: more interesting than I thought it would be, but extremely dark.