What is going on is that, within the context of a friendship of lopsided power dynamics but seeming genuine affection between two teen girls, the more dominant and narcissistic friend is sacrificed to a demon by a group of young men so they can be a successful rock band. This sacrifice turns her into an undead succubus who must then consume young men to survive. Her best friend must then decide how she might be stopped, while navigating the tricky terrain of their lifelong friendship.
I felt compelled to write this review not because Diablo Cody has created the perfect horror movie, or even one it seems most (male?) horror fans will enjoy. The film does suffer a few moments of seemingly forced dialogue which only works because Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried produce such wonderful, natural feeling performances. The reason why this film is amazing has to do with it being the logical conclusion to or heir apparent to Mean Girls and Chumscrubber: The Perfect White Suburban Female Horror flick. Playing on the suburban malaise and disconnections which sometimes structure empty lives, this film ensures we feel fear at the thought of the dark underbelly of small town American teens! Rather than a rehash, it takes Mean Girls to another level, one where female friendships and rapidly proliferating youthful apathy are revealed to be the true terror and not some indestructible man in a mask.
Aaaarghh! There be Spoilers Ahead!
In dreadcentral.com's review - which at times implies that that Diablo Cody does not understand even the basics of narrative structure - they accuse the film of being too concerned with seeming important, and using a whirlpool as a useless plot device at the film's climax. I argue here that part of what they've missed is that Cody and Kusama are all too aware of both the levity and weight of the film, and have used each element purposefully.
It may not be a strictly feminist horror film - Needy escapes, but after all they do kill Jennifer in the end, bad form! But the film does a great job at revealing the true horror, fear, resentments, distrust, and oppression at the center of so many female friendships!! All women at sometime have thought a friend to be a demon: evil, ruthless, heartless, cruel, and capable of infinite evil. This film is what would happen if one could prove it. Therefore the whirlpool is far from a useless plot point, and is instead a potent visual metaphor for a number of things:
First, the terrible fear most civilizations have of female sexuality as that swirling thing that may have no depths, operates beyond man's comprehension, and can consume infinitely. It is no mistake that one of the film's early scenes is of two men dumping boxes of balls into the whirlpool (to try and understand its trajectory and operations) which are consumed by the vortex and never seen again. This gynephobic undercurrent may be represented, to me at least, in somewhat heavy-handed fashion, but I have yet to read a review that points this out, which means folks are missing the significance and it is a cool thing to note!!
Second, the vortex that bad female friendships can become, sucking energy, joy, even life out of you even as you find them impossible to escape. See the previous comments about female friendships.
Third, and finally, the terrifying depths of female abjection and violation in the face of stronger men. It is no mistake that it is near that infinite whirlpool that the band decides to sacrifice Jennifer to a demon. Ostensibly she has to be sacrificed in the name of the band's financial success, but the placement near the whirlpool reminds one of the vast numbers of women who go missing, are raped, assaulted, and abused worldwide and whose cries are either laughed at or go unheard altogether.
Reviewers complaining about the improbability of Cody's language have spent little time around groups of girls age 13 to 19, because the made up slang, the viciousness, and constant pushing and testing is a hallmark of current female interaction - the latter to a disturbing degree I believe. And scenes in the classroom, of Jennifer's demon possessed form laughing about death and sadness is not so far fetched in our mass media, rapidly evolving, 24 hour news cycle lives. A reviewer in Australia complained that the movie fails to create anything a viewer could identify with as scary. Well he clearly has never been in a female friendship.
If there's anything to truly complain about in this film it is the narratively necessary and therefore inevitable, but ultimately uninspiring demise of Jennifer. In a womanist read of the film, Jennifer lives a toxic-masculinist dream: taking on "lovers" when she wants, disposing of them at will, and using their adoration and fear of losing out on the opportunity she offers to suck them dry of energy and leave them empty in her wake. How many films celebrate just this sort of male behavior wherein women occupy cardboard placement in service to men's sexual whims or maternal needs? I adore The Hangover, Wedding Crashers, and Swingers, but these films are no friends to women.
Here, unlike in for example Weird Science (1985), Jennifer as whirlpool does the supernatural selecting and discarding. Her death therefore somehow feels an appeasement of scared male egos - the film's scientists - who really just want that whirlpool to be clarified, contained, and understood. Beyond the usual requirement that horror films punish the bad (often) and save our heroine (sometimes), it seems that Jennifer has to die for her bad friendship, her ruthless high school demeanor, but most importantly for her murder of young men whose only crime was to fall for her beauty imagining it covered a nice person too. Hence the film requires Needy's discovery of the end of the whirlpool, the end of Jennifer's sexually charged rampage through male flesh, the end of male fear of the unpredictable or dangerous in dreamily imagined encounters with strange, hot women. After all, men need to believe there are hot women out there who will sleep with and satisfy them without then eating them afterwards.
What does the whirlpool mean for Needy? In one read, we could say that Needy has discovered her own empowered connection to the whirlpool's violent, powerful possibility - she has become part demon after all, and can truly enjoy her sexuality, refusal to be a victim, and no-nonsense attitude. Now, Needy may become the perfect melding of Jennifer's power, sensuousness, and self-containment, and her own composed, moral, logical self. Thus, in truly amazing and womanist inspired writing, Jennifer and Needy are two halves of a whole, and the perfect woman is and can be (if she wants) a mix of the sassy and sweet, brutal and tender, powerful and empowering!
However, in a more likely read, the discovery of the end of the whirlpool still harkens back to scary female sexuality since the end of the whirlpool equals the earlier deposited, disembodied balls and an obscenely large hunting knife - castration anxiety anyone? And why does the whirlpool seemingly dump out on the side of an empty stretch of road? A lonely no-man's land, where the next person Needy encounters is a motorist played by actor Lance Henriksen. Yes, Henriksen who has been forever immortalized on celluloid as being the male representation of how terrifying and destructive a force reproduction is - pregnancy is death! BUT this does not spell the complete death knell of womanist/feminist readings, and I would have to really stretch to believe Cody and Kusama did not want a less sad reading of this film.
All in all, I found this film full of the necessary frights - that evil friend just might kill me or destroy my life or steal my boyfriend and eat him!! It had genuinely scary moments - groups and solitary men do in fact kidnap and torture women all the time - and legit representations of youthful behavior - I have actually heard dialogue from high schoolers and middle schoolers that eerily resembles this film's dialogue... The film Kick's Ass!!
So reviewers out there, give the film a shot and stop hating just because its "cool" to hate it! The creative minds behind Girl Fight (2000) and Juno (2007) deserve more consideration than you've given them!!
In dreadcentral.com's review - which at times implies that that Diablo Cody does not understand even the basics of narrative structure - they accuse the film of being too concerned with seeming important, and using a whirlpool as a useless plot device at the film's climax. I argue here that part of what they've missed is that Cody and Kusama are all too aware of both the levity and weight of the film, and have used each element purposefully.
It may not be a strictly feminist horror film - Needy escapes, but after all they do kill Jennifer in the end, bad form! But the film does a great job at revealing the true horror, fear, resentments, distrust, and oppression at the center of so many female friendships!! All women at sometime have thought a friend to be a demon: evil, ruthless, heartless, cruel, and capable of infinite evil. This film is what would happen if one could prove it. Therefore the whirlpool is far from a useless plot point, and is instead a potent visual metaphor for a number of things:
First, the terrible fear most civilizations have of female sexuality as that swirling thing that may have no depths, operates beyond man's comprehension, and can consume infinitely. It is no mistake that one of the film's early scenes is of two men dumping boxes of balls into the whirlpool (to try and understand its trajectory and operations) which are consumed by the vortex and never seen again. This gynephobic undercurrent may be represented, to me at least, in somewhat heavy-handed fashion, but I have yet to read a review that points this out, which means folks are missing the significance and it is a cool thing to note!!
Second, the vortex that bad female friendships can become, sucking energy, joy, even life out of you even as you find them impossible to escape. See the previous comments about female friendships.
Third, and finally, the terrifying depths of female abjection and violation in the face of stronger men. It is no mistake that it is near that infinite whirlpool that the band decides to sacrifice Jennifer to a demon. Ostensibly she has to be sacrificed in the name of the band's financial success, but the placement near the whirlpool reminds one of the vast numbers of women who go missing, are raped, assaulted, and abused worldwide and whose cries are either laughed at or go unheard altogether.
Reviewers complaining about the improbability of Cody's language have spent little time around groups of girls age 13 to 19, because the made up slang, the viciousness, and constant pushing and testing is a hallmark of current female interaction - the latter to a disturbing degree I believe. And scenes in the classroom, of Jennifer's demon possessed form laughing about death and sadness is not so far fetched in our mass media, rapidly evolving, 24 hour news cycle lives. A reviewer in Australia complained that the movie fails to create anything a viewer could identify with as scary. Well he clearly has never been in a female friendship.
If there's anything to truly complain about in this film it is the narratively necessary and therefore inevitable, but ultimately uninspiring demise of Jennifer. In a womanist read of the film, Jennifer lives a toxic-masculinist dream: taking on "lovers" when she wants, disposing of them at will, and using their adoration and fear of losing out on the opportunity she offers to suck them dry of energy and leave them empty in her wake. How many films celebrate just this sort of male behavior wherein women occupy cardboard placement in service to men's sexual whims or maternal needs? I adore The Hangover, Wedding Crashers, and Swingers, but these films are no friends to women.
Here, unlike in for example Weird Science (1985), Jennifer as whirlpool does the supernatural selecting and discarding. Her death therefore somehow feels an appeasement of scared male egos - the film's scientists - who really just want that whirlpool to be clarified, contained, and understood. Beyond the usual requirement that horror films punish the bad (often) and save our heroine (sometimes), it seems that Jennifer has to die for her bad friendship, her ruthless high school demeanor, but most importantly for her murder of young men whose only crime was to fall for her beauty imagining it covered a nice person too. Hence the film requires Needy's discovery of the end of the whirlpool, the end of Jennifer's sexually charged rampage through male flesh, the end of male fear of the unpredictable or dangerous in dreamily imagined encounters with strange, hot women. After all, men need to believe there are hot women out there who will sleep with and satisfy them without then eating them afterwards.
What does the whirlpool mean for Needy? In one read, we could say that Needy has discovered her own empowered connection to the whirlpool's violent, powerful possibility - she has become part demon after all, and can truly enjoy her sexuality, refusal to be a victim, and no-nonsense attitude. Now, Needy may become the perfect melding of Jennifer's power, sensuousness, and self-containment, and her own composed, moral, logical self. Thus, in truly amazing and womanist inspired writing, Jennifer and Needy are two halves of a whole, and the perfect woman is and can be (if she wants) a mix of the sassy and sweet, brutal and tender, powerful and empowering!
However, in a more likely read, the discovery of the end of the whirlpool still harkens back to scary female sexuality since the end of the whirlpool equals the earlier deposited, disembodied balls and an obscenely large hunting knife - castration anxiety anyone? And why does the whirlpool seemingly dump out on the side of an empty stretch of road? A lonely no-man's land, where the next person Needy encounters is a motorist played by actor Lance Henriksen. Yes, Henriksen who has been forever immortalized on celluloid as being the male representation of how terrifying and destructive a force reproduction is - pregnancy is death! BUT this does not spell the complete death knell of womanist/feminist readings, and I would have to really stretch to believe Cody and Kusama did not want a less sad reading of this film.
All in all, I found this film full of the necessary frights - that evil friend just might kill me or destroy my life or steal my boyfriend and eat him!! It had genuinely scary moments - groups and solitary men do in fact kidnap and torture women all the time - and legit representations of youthful behavior - I have actually heard dialogue from high schoolers and middle schoolers that eerily resembles this film's dialogue... The film Kick's Ass!!
So reviewers out there, give the film a shot and stop hating just because its "cool" to hate it! The creative minds behind Girl Fight (2000) and Juno (2007) deserve more consideration than you've given them!!
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