Teeth (2008)

This is the best flesh-eating-vagina movie ever made. But it's the only flesh-eating-vagina movie. At least as far as I know. I'll have to ask my friend Jim about it, and then he'll probably name like 10 Japanese movies about killer vaginas. But if flesh-eating-vaginas becomes a Hollywood genre, Teeth (2008) will be the Black Christmas of its kind: A movie that is important because it's the first one, but also a movie that just isn't all that great. Though we can't ignore the glaring truth: flesh eating vagina movies will never be important.

Some of this was really great. There were times during the beginning when it reminded me, of all things actually, of early Tim Burton stuff. Like the twisted suburban fantasy stuff. The main character, Dawn, lives in a quiet neighborhood with her ailing mom and stepdad, and as she bikes home from school one day, we see the looming towers of a nuclear power plant behind her house (hinting at the cause of Dawn's "gift"). The music is bright and plucky, reflecting Dawn's virtuousness and her good little go-getter attitude. Then there a bunch of up and down moments. Some don't quite work, like the scenes where Dawn is explaining abstinence to the Purity Ring kids at school, which I thought could have been funnier. And then other scenes are on point, like the dorky dude at the end who finally gets to sleep with Dawn, who he's lusted after throughout high school. At this point Dawn has learned to harness her power, and since he seems like a nice enough guy (rather than the wayward Purity Ring kid who gets a little overzealous), she uh, allows him to enter...but then he calls his buddy in the middle of the act to brag about his conquest, and oops, bad move dude. The facial expressions in this scene are so good.

There's enough campiness here for me to have enjoyed it quite a bit, though. Jess Weixler, who plays the main character, Dawn, is pretty amazing, and I'm sure she's getting calls to be in all sorts of indie horror stuff now, although IMDB lists what look like a few dramas on her plate. And as it should be, all the death (penectomy?) scenes are done with maximum gore and were effective enough to make my crotch sore with sympathy pains. Of course, once we've seen the first vagina attack, the rest get tired pretty quickly, since there all just variations of that one. But there's a hilarious scene where Dawn's gynecologist (Josh Pais), gets his fingers ripped off. He falls to the floor, blood gushing, screaming "It's true! Vagina Dentata! Vagina Dentata!" Man, that part had me cracking up. And there are 3 full-on realistic severed-weener shots before this whole movie's over, but not one single close-up of the titular chompers. That seemed to me like a logical step in keeping with all the over-the-top-ness, but maybe they thought it would compromise the naivete and cuteness of Dawn's character if they showed that. Or maybe they did and had to cut it for an R rating? Why am I so interested in this?

Most of those attack scenes got the appropriately ridiculous treatment, even if there was a bit of letdown after I realized they were just the same thing over and over. The whole subplot with Dawn's sexually jealous step-brother seemed kind of thrown-in and underdeveloped. It's just there waiting until it needs to fulfill its duty as the movie's "final showdown," which is expected and feels anti-climactic when it ends.

So Teeth is good if you want a slight little horror comedy. Now that we have the first one out of the way, I look forward to someone doing this a little better the next time.