Diablo Cody

By Eugene Novikov

Jennifer's Body is getting panned in some circles for the alleged tragic flaw of a horror movie not being particularly scary. They're mostly right -- Diablo Cody's genre follow-up to Juno doesn't really elevate the heart rate very often. But I think that's because it tips to the "high school" side of the "high school horror" balance; it's more of a teen drama with a bloody metaphorical twist than a full-on horror flick.

That may disappoint some fans, but it sort of gets at why high school horror movies work so well, so often. It's a cliche that "high school is scary," but movies that make a connection between the reasons high school is scary in real life and whatever monstrosity happens to be stalking or haunting the characters are the ones that tend to leave the biggest impression.

In honor of Jennifer's Body, which I think will be unjustly maligned in the weeks to come, here's a list of some high school horror movies that figured this out -- and a few that were just plain fun.

1. Ginger Snaps - The movie's IMDb plot summary helpfully begins: "This film uses werewolfism as a metaphor for puberty." Well, yeah -- though it is generally considered polite not to lead with something like that. (Sorry.) But it's not all allegorical navel-gazing. Ginger Snaps is an elegant, harsh piece of teen horror that brutally plays on teenage insecurities, and is a pretty good werewolf flick too. It's a shame that director John Fawcett largely disappeared into the (better-paying, I hear) abyss of television.

Read the rest at Cinematical!

First, a disclosure: In both its red and green band trailers I think Jennifer's Body looks like a lot of Idle Hands channeling fun with a coating of Tamara's hot girl gone evil kills all the boys sexiness. I've got nothing against the production.

However I am a little confused as to why the red variant, which was the draft the director/writer/producers felt was better suited for horror fans, earned a red band and yet this newly released green cut of the trailer, which will be playing in front of Bruno, shows just as much visually questionable material and yet it gets the "Approved for Appropriate Audiences" green backing.

I'm not confused as to why it got the red band. Megan Fox dropped an F bomb in the same coital context that would bump any PG-13 film to an R, that's an MPAA no-no. I am confused as to how that trailer is better tailored to horror fans over the green trailer. Both play up Fox' sexuality in slow motion, both show her killing people, and both show her holding a lighter under her tongue. The only substantial difference found in the "appropriate audiences" trailer is that it shows more character and plot whereas the red band is full of silly.

That's what has me worried about Jennifer's Body. Click on to watch the non-horror audience green trailer, which just debuted on Yahoo, and see what I'm talking about.