The best film of the decade about a teenage girl with a killer sharp-toothed vagina. A literal vagina dentata. High school’s tough already and on top of that, young Dawn (Jess Weixler) has a cunt that requires both a gynecologist and a dentist. When a girl has a carnivorous cooch, you might figure she has two immediate options: a) head straight down the glorious path of anal sex or b) don’t have sex at all. Dawn chooses b) and becomes one of the top members of her school’s abstinence program. Things get complicated when she meets a guy she likes and then it gets even more complicated when he tries to rape her. After that, Dawn figures out a third option for a girl with a shark-like snatch: c) use it as a weapon.
Some writers compare this film to David Cronenberg, but they’re reaching. This is a deadpan teen angst black comedy that has little in common with Cronenberg’s frosty medical fixations. I actually see this as something of an update of 1942’s Cat People, and not just because both films are about killer pussies. As in Cat People, this deals with a woman who can’t have sex because of a dark and unbelievable secret. The big difference is that Cat People is told from a man’s point of view and Teeth is told from a woman’s.
Whatever metaphor you want to read into it (STDs? General sexual dysfunction? A young person’s anxiety about their first time? A feminist statement?), you probably won’t be bored. Writer/director Mitchell Lichtenstein (son of artist Roy Lichtenstein) crafts some solid entertainment here with lots of clever touches and some riotous satire of the stress of active teen celibacy. Like Dawn’s box, this has teeth.