Teeth (2007)

Teeth

Directed By: Mitchell Lichtenstein

Cast: Jess Weixler, John Hensley, Josh Pais, Hale Appleman, Lenny von Dohlen

Reviewed By: Ken Mooney

Rating: Four-Out-Of-Five Bananas

There’s only a handful of polite ways to describe what Teeth is about, so we’ll cover the basics here and let you add them up yourself: it’s a horror film involving a girl with teeth and said teeth are not in her mouth (well, she does have teeth there, they’re just not the important ones). If you haven’t quite gotten there yet, one scene involves a hysterically screaming gynaecologist clutching a bleeding stump…got it yet?

Taking that as your starting poing, Teeth could be either incredibly crass or wonderfully intelligent, and thankfully it fits into the latter category, and it’s all due to little touches. Dawn (Jess Weixler) isn’t just your usual teenage girl: a pre-credits introduction aside, when we first meet her she’s espousing the virtues of preserving her virginity for her wedding night, not quite aware of the horrors lurking below. Until, of course, she meets Tobey (Hale Appleman, channelling the spirit of Adam Brody…wait, what do you mean he’s still alive?) and so our burgeoning romance begins leading to the inevitable Bobbit-moment…well, the first one, anyway.

It sounds a lot worse than it really is, to be honest, as Teeth shuns the temptation to be an effects-laden creature feature or a hammy comedy: it’s less about the body count and more about Dawn’s transformation from a confused, but somewhat self-righteous virgin into…well, a bit of a slutty monster, to be honest. Yet Teeth still embodies parts of what makes the typical horror movie, and the typical comedy…and the usual drama for that matter. Weixler is the perfect Dawn, and the complexity of the film requires her to go through the whole gamut of emotions: her beginnings are portrayed with a likeable, but somewhat fragile innocence that then devolves into fully-fledged sex kitten (think Alexis Bledel going from Gilmore Girls to Sin City and you’ll be on the right track.)

There aren’t many moments in Teeth that’ll quench the desire for blood that fans of Saw or Hostel might be expecting, but they are there. Don’t let that put you off though: if you survived through the zipper scene of There’s Something About Mary you’ll get through this without much more of a shock (and if you can keep your eyes open for them, there’s some hilarious reward.) But thankfully, the film avoids any cheap scares or jumps: we never actually get to see ‘the beast’ in question, but are treated to some pretty convincing descriptions of its work: in fact, the knowledge of what it can do (and the accompanying sound effects in particular) are much more effective than anything CGI or puppetry could produce.

The only downside to Teeth is that all this combines to create a film that isn’t quite sure what it wants to be, at times poignant (a critically sick parent usually encourages a tear) at times funny (and cruelly so…it involves dismembered male genitalia after all) and at times heartbreakingly serious (rape, murder and death all come up over the course of the film.) Combined with the humour and horror, Teeth comes across as better than the sum of its parts, surprisingly organic and working very well together, but before the credits roll, there are moments where you’ll be wondering just how seamlessly one scene has joined into the next.

Verdict:

Part-drama, part-comedy, part-horror…it’s a bit confusing to get into it, but it’s intelligent, funny and scary.

Originally published on FrankTheMonkey.com