The objectified star of a million adolescent fantasies, Megan Fox has ascended the misogyny-fostering ranks of Hollywood’s considerable plastic actress sector faster than you can say “botox.” Funny thing is, she’s managed to become Tinseltown’s most sought after leading lady without ever being required to act.  Director Karyn Kusama, best known for 2000′s “Girlfight,” aims to remedy that with “Juno” writer, Diablo Cody’s second hipster-tinged screenplay, “Jennifer’s Body.”  Fox indeed acts in this unholy witch’s cauldron concoction of comedy, high school drama, teen angst, sarcasm, and graphic, bloody violence, and the result isn’t as disastrous as expected, at least in her case.

The idolized sexpot stars as the titular Jennifer, a gorgeous, superficial, status-obsessed teenager, and primary perpetrator of said violence,  who falls victim to a botched Satanic ritual that imbues her with supernatural abilities and a demonic hunger for the flesh of teenage boys.  Quite a departure for Sam Witwicky’s pouty main squeeze in Michael Bay’s “Transformers” flicks.

Unlike other high school drama queen femme fatales, however, Jennifer doesn’t surround herself with a gaggle of clucking know-nothings fixated on their own imagined superiority.  Instead, she does something even more ego-maniacal.  She only hangs around one other girl, the degradingly dubbed Needy, a mentally sharp but plain-looking social klutz, ably played by Amanda Seyfried.  Why?  Because she looks better by comparison.  They’re history as childhood BFF’s really has little to do with it.  Jennifer’s narcissism knows no bounds, although, with such a delicate ego, it seems she is the one more deserving of the moniker, Needy.  Maybe that was Cody’s intention, to accentuate the dizzying game of projected identities that consumes early adulthood.  Or, perhaps I’m giving Cody too much credit. It’s hard to tell because Cody’s script, while steeped in clever sounding dialogue, leaves much to be desired as far as subtlety and subtext.

I suppose there’s an argument to be made that looking for a fully realized, multi-layered narrative in a tongue-in-cheek high school horror comedy is foolish.  But, when a film doesn’t work on its most basic terms, it’s only natural to assess whether that means failure, or whether it’s an intentional result that reveals some sort of duplicity of construction.  In this case, all signs point to the former.

“Jennifer’s Body” isn’t a bad movie, but it’s not a good one either.  Lines that should be funny, aren’t, and those that shouldn’t be, are.  The same is true of the myriad horror elements.  And after the climax strikes, like a tipping point of unintentional hilarity, things get downright laughable.

Cody does take some calculated shots at poseur musicians, embodied by a simultaneously magnetic and detestable Adam Brody who plays Nikolai, the vain indie rocker responsible for Jennifer’s demonic possession, and the overall absurdity of popularity that hit their mark, but sadly, “Jennifer’s Body” never capitalizes on its own novelty.  It’s biggest success is merely confirming Needy’s assertion that, “Hell is a teenage girl.”  And who needs a movie to figure that out?

Score: 2.5/5