The front cover proclaims Teeth "the most alarming cautionary tale for men since Fatal Attraction." The quote is attributed to Kirk Honeycutt of The Hollywood Reporter. You know, reading that, my immediate reaction is to disagree. For my money that honor falls upon Hard Candy, the 2006 film in which a suspected Internet predator gets the tables turned on him by Juno's Ellen Page. Now there is a film that is incredibly involving and more than a little cringe-inducing while making you wonder who exactly you should cheer for, if anyone.
However, that reaction came prior to actually watching Teeth. Now, having seen the movie, the playing field is much closer to being level. Teeth will surely make any male in the audience a little shy. This is a movie that is funny, frightening, and terribly effective.
This movie takes the myth of vagina dentata and gives it an exploitive twist en route to a story that is sure to get a rise out of an audience. The myth in its original form has appeared in stories and legends from cultures all over the world, including Egyptian, Native American, Greek, and African. It was used to explain the dangers of sex with strange women, or under inappropriate circumstances, by feeding on the male fear of castration. It is something that survives to this day in the form of crude jokes. I am sure that there are many, like me, who have heard at least one or two of said jokes, but were unaware of its origin in the vagina dentata myth.
With Teeth, first time writer/director Mitchell Lichtenstein has taken the myth and taken it a step back from the current level of crude joke, injecting it with a sense of humor, of immediacy, and of genuine fear. In other words, he is giving it some real weight. For too long the myth has languished as the butt of a joke; it is time that the real fear from which it was born so long ago be given back to it. To that end, Teeth is a very dark comedy that preys on the fears of men, empowers women, and gives it substance unlike any joke has been able to give it.
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