The genius of the dark comedy slash horror movie Teeth is that it combines the fear of sex represented by the vagina dentata myth with the all-too real repercussions of social conservatism in modern American schools. And also that, in its own way, it satirizes the teen-horror genre, where the first victims are always the sexually active ones, while at the same time offering enough blood and fake mutilation to qualify as a real horror film itself. And finally, by putting identifiable characters in absurd, but strangely realistic, situations, to be a truly great dark comedy. I loved it; it's definitely going on my ten-best list.
Dawn, the lead character, is initially unaware of her second set of chompers. She's a prominent student leader of an abstinence-until-marriage group at her high school. She, and her friends, are having difficulty keeping to the ideal of "purity"; impure thoughts are driven into them by movies, advertisements and their own raging hormones. Their teachers are no help at de-mystifying sex; their health teacher cannot even make himself utter the V word. In their textbooks, a depiction of female genitals is covered up by a giant gold sticker. The teacher has trouble explaining why the corresponding male anatomy can be shown until Dawn offers a reason: that women have an innate modesty (and the boy who has a crush on her is quick to agree). It's the resurgent but age-old American puritanism: female sexuality is a threat to a male-dominated order; driven down by making it unspeakable.
But perhaps helped by the nuclear power plant looming near Dawn's house, Nature has responded with a new adaptation. In a discussion of evolution, their science teacher is very careful to avoid scientific evidence and give credence to "alternative theories." In this repressed environment, the scene is set for Dawn's terrible blossoming.
Her step-brother is a polar opposite. Tattooed and pierced, fixated on his step-sister after a childhood incident that opens the movie, with his heavy metal cranked, he can hardly get off his girlfriend's ass long enough to smoke a bowl or shoot his B.B. gun into the wall.
But I don't want to give away too much more. See this movie! In a decade filled with third-rate horror movies, many of them knock-offs or remakes of those from the 1980's, this one really stands out as using the genre in a smart, witty, darkly comedic way. The actors, all of them, are perfect in their roles. [And I'll again mention Lightning Bug which also uses some conventions of horror, but in a much different way, to dramatize a kids' escape from an abusive step-parent in the repressive environment of a small town in the deep South].
