Director: Karyn Kusama
Year: 2009
Country: USA
Alternate Titles: N/A
Genre: Creature Feature; Possession
Plot:
When her best friend begins acting totally different, a girl finds that she's been used by a local rock band as a sacrifice for their success and is responsible for the blood-soaked rampage through town, forcing her to stop the savage creature, leaving a trail of bodies around town, and save her friend.
Review:
Frankly, this one became quite an enjoyable and entertaining creature feature. One of its better elements is the rather fresh and original take on the possession angle, which really does this one well. By using the possession to become a crazed flesh-eating demon with supernatural powers, there's a difference to this that causes a lot to like here in how she behaves to make this a lot of fun. The ability to hover in the air, walk on the ceiling, and utilize the lake as a regeneration tool are all pretty novel ideas and cause this one to feel pretty original at times. Being able to rely on living with the possession and seeing how the film tackles the upgrade of her lifestyle afterwards, with how she handles those new and improved characteristics that are shown to have that kind of effect on her, gives this one a rather fine setup with all these new elements brought into play.
Likewise, that also extends to the rather fast and frenetic action along the way, which really makes for an exciting and thrilling time here, as this one tends to roll along at such an extended pace that it really gets a lot of its positives from this factor. The introductory scene to her condition, investigating noises in the darkened house with the phone call and then the discovery in the kitchen sets this one up nicely, and the rather frantic encounter within the flower shop makes this one incredibly exciting as the atmosphere of the location mixed with the suspense of the stalking along the rows of flowers comes together for a really enjoyable time. Other big action scenes from the opening accident at the concert, along with the back-story explanation of everything, and the final battle in the bedroom, all create a thoroughly entertaining amount of action in here, which manages to send this out on a high note.
As well, the cast here is quite impressive for what it's supposed to be. Basically a two-person show, it's quite surprising that the two leads work as well as they do, with Megan Fox giving a stellar performance as Jennifer Check, the possessed girl. She handles the witty dialogue quite well and never seems tongue-tied with the complex quips and one-liners, which shows her sitcom background, and her obvious sex appeal makes those scenes rather enjoyable. Still, the complexity of her change is made through her behaviors as she starts becoming more ravenous and outgoing, which is a nice physical change to see played out here. She looks way, way too old to be a high-schooler, as she has to be in her mid-20s by this time, and it's quite obvious, but that's the only thing to be said about her performance. Amanda Seyfried as her friend Anita 'Needy' Lesnicky gives a solid performance, not really as impactful as Megan's, but she holds her own in the latter half where he desire and intentions to get her friend fixed. Truthfully, none of the cast is really that bad, though, and along with the pleasingly graphic and bloody kills here, it makes up for this one's good qualities.
There are a few minor ones in here that do bring this down, most notably the film's tendency to rely on hip-sounding lingo for the sake of attempting to be cool. There are numerous scenes of the two of them spouting off all sorts of hip lingo, trying to be creative or original, and it comes off as trying way too hard, so it leaves the middle of the film really quite clumsy. Otherwise, the other flaw to this is the fact of it being a tease without being exploitative about it, tending to dance around the concept of her being a complete and utter sex-starved woman back backtracking on really going full throttle on the whole problem, leaving it with dry sex-scenes and clumsily edited scenes hiding these facets of the film. These manage to hold it down just enough, though.
Overview: ****/5
This one has a lot more to like than expected here, as there are only a few minor elements on display that somewhat hold it down a bit. There's enough to like here that it's legitimately interesting to those willing to give this one a chance, while those who can't overlook the flaws will probably not be swayed by anything here.
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