Sexuality has long been the main driving force behind everything from urban legends to some major religions. Mythology, folk lore, and scary stories told around the fire are regularly inspired by our fear of the unknown and what's more unknown for a large number of men than the power of women's sexuality? Writer/director Mitchell Lichtenstein uses one of the most unusual myths, that of the vagina dentata (look it up in Google if you're on a computer without a filter or parental blocker), to craft a pitch-black horror/comedy in Teeth, one of the more unique films you're likely to see this year or any year. Playing off the natural awkwardness of adolescence combined with some of the hypocrisy of the abstinence movement, Lichtenstein has written a completely original story that's kind of like a twisted horror movie combined with the religious black comedy Saved!. Teeth kind of falls apart in the final act when Lichtenstein seems uncertain how to end his crazy concept but for at least two-thirds, it's a successful black comedy that should work for anyone willing to open their wallet for a horror/comedy about a poor girl with choppers in her vagina.

Teeth stars the brilliantly cast Jess Weixler as Dawn, a poor girl who is clearly afraid of her blooming sexuality. She's the leader of an abstinence movement that asks kids to wait for marriage to lose their virginity. But then she meets Tobey (Hale Appleman), a boy who pushes all of her not-so-innocent buttons. When they go swimming and end up in a low-lit cave, kids start to do what they do and Tobey gets carried away. What Tobey finds when he tries to rape poor Dawn is the horrendous end that many feel rapists deserve in the end and Dawn is traumatized. She doesn't even quite understand what happened. Do all women have teeth in their vagina? Can she control them? Could she even use this to her advantage?

Due to committed performances by Weixler and the rest of the cast and crew, Teeth works as a great metaphor for the fumbling and stumbling of teenage sexuality. What other mission would a poor girl with deadly choppers in her private parts pursue than abstinence? And if a guy tried to take that abstinence from her physically, could you really be sorry for him when he gets what he deserves? Lichtenstein balances the tone of Teeth perfectly, not turning it into too much of a physical comedy. For one, Weixler plays the fears and trauma of Dawn one hundred percent seriously. It's the ridiculousness of the story and a few off-jokes that make the piece funny, not the mugging of the actors. This material could have been fumbled into an awful American Pie movie in the wrong hands, but Lichtenstein and his team play it as straight as they needed to for it to be effective as a comedy and a commentary on one of the most mysterious things in the world - female sexuality.

In the final act, Lichtenstein kind of loses his way. The inevitable happens between Dawn and her creepy step-brother (Nip/Tuck's John Hensley) and a film that kind of felt like it was building to something just sort of ends. It's partially because Lichtenstein sets up a premise and a heroine that can't have an easy ending but he could have come up with something else. Also, it kind of feels like Dawn makes a bit too drastic a character shift in the final act for the sake of the plot. We wouldn't give anything away but Dawn goes from victim to aggressor awfully quickly. It's a minor complaint. Teeth works so well and is so original for at least the first half that it makes the slight fumble near the end zone forgivable. Like a lot of relationships, the beginning is more fun than the end, but you won't regret the union.