Teeth

This movie has been an odd favorite of mine for a long time. It could have, should have, been so terrible, but decent direction and strong acting performances absolutely save it.

The plot is so ridiculous it's hard to explain. In a suburban town, growing up in the shadow of an often-seen but never-mentioned nuclear reactor, a religious teen, the kind who wears a purity ring and goes around to schools lecturing to the kids about the evils of sex, learns, through a series of horrific sexually violent encounters with despicable men, that she has teeth inside her, and evolves from being vehemently opposed to premarital sex to, ultimately, using it to get revenge. It's an absurd setup, but handled so thoughtfully, and with such a nuanced, wide-ranging, and realistic performance from the lead actress, that it actually makes for a surprisingly good movie.

This was originally mis-marketed as a straight horror film—it's not, it's more like a very straight-faced satire—and nowadays gets labeled a "horror comedy" which, truth to tell, is probably not far off, although that usually indicates a far worse movie than this, usually something neither sufficiently scary to be horror nor funny enough to be comedy. This has no scares, and no real humor, but it has its moments where it brushes up against both.

It's not without its flaws. A lot (but not all) of the male characters tend to be one-dimensional caricatures, and a few of the story points about the secondary characters' interactions with her are too contrived to take seriously—in that way, it does almost seem to be going for comic exaggeration, but, again, there's really no jokes in this, so it just comes off strange and contrived.

But, it also has a deft touch, the story is told much better than you'd expect from the plot synopsis,and a lot of fun details are included throughout: the constant visual presence of the nuclear towers hinting at why this is all happening; small bits like the high school teacher lecturing about evolution to disbelieving religious students and saying to the lead "this is about YOU", before the movie reveals that she, herself, is in fact evolving, both physically, and more subtly, as a person; and several times, the disposition of some of the men's, uh... severed appendages... are... uh, cinematically clever.

I originally saw this at least 15 years ago—thinking, due to the marketing, that I was renting a horror film—and it always stuck in my head. Tonight it popped up on Tubi, so I gave it another watch, and it held up as well as I remember. In fact, in some ways better, despite the couple of glaring flaws. I really like this one.

But really, above all, the lead actress carries it. I don't think this movie would have worked without as skilled an actress in the lead role. She really carries the whole thing across the goal line, mostly by herself. I gotta be honest, the thin characterizations of men and ridiculous amount of suspension of disbelieve required for some parts make it hard for me to put this in "honorable mention", despite how good the good things about it are. But it goes there just for her performance.