Jenifer (2005)

Too much of everything

Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

If we look at "Jenifer" from our own point of view, this is a horror story in which the monster, with disfigured face and the body of a beautiful woman, is seducing men, in order to provide shelter and protection while killing everything on its path. On the other hand, Jennifer is neither crazy nor evil. If we look at the story from her perspective, this is a shocking drama about a being that is not essentially human, but a wild beast that does what is in predator's nature - follows its urge to hunt and provide a breeding partner. This duality is what makes this film so powerful. As we sit on the edge of a chair in a tremendous anticipation, and we struggle with the nausea caused by Jennifer's face and scenes of cannibalism, at the same time we are sympathetic to her and we fear for her survival. The excellent story is honored with even better acting, directing and music, and the only criticism I have on this episode is that its ending is more than predictable.9/10

i absolutely LOVE Argento. Suspiria is in my top five favorite horror films of all time, and I've enjoyed MOST of his other works. I don't think anybody would dispute though, that as he's grown older, his confidence as a director has waned. Jennifer is undeniable proof of this, although I can't pretend that the blame lays squarely with him. I've always liked Steven Webber as an actor (I thought his Jack Torrance in the made- for-TV Shining was quite good), but he should maybe take a break from writing; the script is almost unbearable. Jennifer is based on a short story which I've never read, so I don't know just how much dialogue Webber ripped from it, still...someone on set should have been smart enough to know that "If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck with a meat cleaver," is just bad writing. And the dialogue isn't the only problem. --------Spoiler -------Why, oh why doesn't he just kill her in the cabin? I mean, seriously...He ties her up, drags her down a ROAD when he has a perfectly secluded house to off her in. C'mon. There are a lot of moments like this, too. A couple logical failings would be forgivable (let's face it, every horror movie has a few) but I was scoffing so much it sounded like I was coughing up a hairball. -------End of Spoilers-------Now, back to Argento. Ultimately, I think he was the wrong director for this. He's not exactly known for subtlety, his earlier works being highly explicit, graphically-speaking, and I think Jennifer would have benefited tremendously from even a tiny bit more delicacy.

This episode of "Masters of Horror" doesn't make a lot of sense. But it makes up for it by being really, really disgusting and filled with copious amounts of nudity. It was an odd mix--lots and lots of nudity (like a soft-core porn film) and lots of disgusting yechiness. It certainly is not an easy episode to love...just like its character, Jenifer.The show begins with a cop (Steven Weber) seeing a crazed man about to butcher a woman. He orders the man to stop but he refuses and the cop is forced to shoot the man. Only then does he get a good look at the lady--and she is a hideous monster with an amazingly sexy body. Now here is where it gets weird and makes no sense---she is put in a mental institution and he checks her out to come live with him and his family. From the beginning, this doesn't work out--as she's a monster!! But for some reason, the cop cannot let her go and soon begins having sex with her (ewww). Later, she eats the family's cat and graduates up to eating people---and yet he cannot let her go. You assume she must have some weird psychic hold on him...or he's just an idiot who likes having sex with disgusting monster.All in all, this is a very, very nasty show. While I loved the first episode I watched of the series with George Wendt, this one was hard to love and really was disgusting. I also assume most folks simply wouldn't watch this due to it being so incredibly explicit and gross. A hard episode to love. Also, as I watched this with my wife, she accurately predicted how the show would end after only about five minutes into it! By the way, Weber (of "Wings" fame) also wrote this episode. And, like other show in the series, it's directed by a famous director--in this case, Dario Argento of Italian horror film fame.

Before I've seen this film, I supposed it had been filmed in the usual "Dario Argento" way. However, "Jenifer" is pretty much different from his other works. Although not being a regular Argento's film, perhaps I dare say it is even better. The expected italo-English present in most of his movies, fortunately, did not appear, but the pure American English! The scenes and the make up are better than even. But, the best part of the movie is the story of a deformed girl who seems to attract men with her wild sexuality, despite her obvious animal-behaviour and repulsive, disfigured face. She and the youngish policeman who gives up his normal life for her led us to fabulous and well-planned ending.