Review

The fear of the castrating female—and her most fearsome weapon, the vagina dentata—has been woven to squirmy effect into horror pictures like Alien. In Teeth, Mitchell Lichtenstein makes the old v.d. the centerpiece of a gory female-revenge black comedy about Dawn (Jess Weixler), an abstinence-proselytizing teen whose vagina puts the bite on guys who don’t know no means no. (The titanic nuclear-power plant in back of her house might have something to do with the mutation.) Most of the movie works because the blonde Weixler has a ­darling-daffy face (a pinch of Alicia Silverstone, a dollop of Drew Barrymore) and a should-I-or-shouldn’t-I ambivalence about sex that’s part realism, part screwball. The ending is a cheat, though. Once all the males are revealed as predators and Dawn learns to love her Inner Guillotine, the director might as well say, “Bite me.” — David Edelstein

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New York Magazine Reviews

• David Edelstein's Full Review (1/21/08)