Oughts from the Aughts: Jennifer's Body (2009)
My favorite underrated gems from the 2000s, explained in under 2010 words
“Advisory: This movie contains gore, violence, strong language and sexual situations, but - and there's really no politically correct way to say this - Megan Fox fans will be disappointed by the fact that very little of Jennifer's body makes it into the movie.” -Peter Hartlaub, reviewing Jennifer’s Body for the SF Chronicle in 2009
“The Default Male gaze does not just dominate cinema, it looks down on society like the Eye of Sauron in The Lord of the Rings. Every other identity group is ‘othered’ by it.”- Grayson Perry, The Descent of Man
“And so, Queer Reader, we return to Jennifer’s body, how the accusation of queerbaiting flattens, impotent, against its walls. Not just because the film is uniquely bisexual, but because bisexuality is inherently resistant to heteronormative frameworks; because gatekeeping is shortsighted and unbecoming; because desire and understanding do not always go hand in hand.” - Carmen Maria Machado
I have a particular soft spot for misunderstood movies, ones that, whether due to studio incompetence, persistent misconceptions, or just being ahead of their time, landed awkwardly at first only to be embraced and cherished years later. I opened my essay on Pan’s Labyrinth by discussing Starship Troopers because that film perfectly embodies the type of overlooked cinematic brilliance that I love to champion. Besides Starship Troopers, no other movie I’ve seen captures why this type of open-minded reappraisal is necessary quite like 2009’s Jennifer’s Body.
In the fictional town of Devil’s Kettle Minnesota, we meet best friends Anita aka “Needy,” played by Amanda Seyfried, and Jennifer, played by Megan Fox. Needy is wholesome, earnest, and nerdy while Jennifer is sexy, confident, and precocious. Needy’s awkward straddling of girlhood and womanhood is perhaps best represented by her boyfriend, Chip, who looks like sour cream incarnate, played to bland brilliance by Johnny Simmons. Jennifer’s contrasting fixation on owning and benefitting from her blossoming femininity is on full display when they attend an indie band show at a dive bar. Bosom brandished like the weapon she intends on using it as, she tells a skeptical Needy:
“Don’t be so J.V., Needy. They’re just boys, Morsels. We have all the power. Don’t you know that?” Then she begins flirting with the indie bands’s front man, a perfect simulacrum of Pete Wentz thanks to a sleazy performance by Adam Brody. After the show, Jennifer goes home with the obviously creepy band and vanishes. Needy fears her friend has been assaulted or worse. When Jennifer emerges, visibly bloodied, she’s a different woman. The rest of the film depicts Needy wrestling with Jennifer’s shocking behavior and insatiable appetites.
This movie could have been an immediate hit. Screenwriter Diablo Cody had just won an Oscar for writing Juno. Amanda Seyfried had just broken out in Mean Girls and Mama Mia! Megan Fox was one of the most in demand actors in Hollywood thanks to Transformers.
Despite all this, it was a critical and box office flop , audiences and critics alike bemoaning the sparse scares, confusing tone, and lack of exploitative scenes featuring Megan Fox’s body. How did this smart and subversive satire fail to stick the landing so badly?
Any autopsy of what happened to Jennifer’s Body in 2009 should start with the marketing. Screenwriter Diablo Cody and director Karen Kusama were trying to make a horror film that teenage girls could relate to, but the studio insisted they play up the sex appeal of star Megan Fox in the marketing so it would appeal to teenage boys. The resulting dissonance was a self-inflicted wound.
Rewatching it with friends this past Halloween I was struck by how sad that is, since there is much to love about this movie. Before even touching on the core themes, it’s got fun and unexpected supporting performances by Chris Pratt, Adam Brody, JK Simmons, and Amy Sedaris and is full of zany and funny dialogue. The little details that carbon date it to this stretch of the late 2000s are delightful, like Jennifer’s low-rise jeans and candy pink lip gloss, or the dive bar having a 9/11 themed patriotic shooter. It’s got pitch perfect late aughts musical cues like “Kiss With a Fist” by Florence And The Machine and “I Wanna Love You” by Akon. From top to bottom, Jennifer’s Body has a unique Mean Girls meets horror movie aesthetic that I haven’t seen anywhere else.
It’s messy, funny, and gross in the same way that our adolescence is, which was the point Diablo Cody was trying to make, first and foremost by refusing to limit herself to one genre. This genre fluidity, I suspect, is why is why many dismissed it as not scary enough to be a true horror movie, not funny enough to be a comedy, and not heart-wrenching enough to be a coming of age drama. I can see why some people felt confused or even deceived upon watching it, especially based on how it was marketed. Despite what you saw on the poster and in the trailer, this film refuses to place the male gaze on Megan Fox.
Moreover, while other horror movies discard women as soon as they’re attacked, this one centers their experience and explores what happens afterwards. It’s Jennifer that emerges with the power and agency, not her attackers. Writing for Vox, Constance Grady illuminates how:
“What Jennifer’s Body offers up in response to the trauma and tragedy of what happened to Jennifer in the van is the cathartic fantasy of what happens next, of Jennifer turning her trauma against her attackers, of her using her victimized, violated body to wreak bloody vengeance on the patriarchy.”
The most obvious reading of this film is that it’s an unflinching allegory about the horrors of sexual assault, years before #MeToo made this discussion enter the mainstream. The sexual violence perpetrated on Jennifer has grisly echoes throughout her entire town. We watch helplessly as she flips the script and becomes a literal sexual predator, hunting unsuspecting men who are lured in by her femininity, only to be violently consumed. This clever inversion makes men in the audience viscerally confront the vulnerability and exploitation women face daily. It also isn’t shy at critiquing male arrogance in the process. In a video essay titled “The Horrific Female Gaze”, The Take points out how:
“The way Jennifer is easily able to coax men into dangerous, secluded areas also seems to make fun of men, who only value women for their bodies, to a degree that they’ll blindly throw themselves into suspicious, or even dangerous situations to sleep with them.”
One of the most evocative moments in the movie intercuts between a fumbling and awkward love scene between Needy and Chip and a violent and disturbing one between Jennifer and this poor emo kid that looks like the frontman of Green Day. As we cut between one sexual encounter that’s earnest and clumsy and one that’s predatory and diabolical, your discomfort at the jarring tones and clashing imagery is quite palpable and quite intentional. Jennifer’s Body doesn’t hesitate to shine an unflattering light on how our society objectifies, exploits, and consumes female bodies, and is content to roll around in the messiness of our sexual appetites and fears about womanhood and adolescence.
There’s also a compelling queer reading of the film that went whizzing over audiences and critics heads when it first came out. While in the marketing the on screen kiss between Fox and Seyfried was used to play up girl-on-girl action that wold bring men to theaters, in the film it serves the literal opposite purpose. The kiss is neither there as eye candy to titilate men, nor as queer baiting, but to illuminate the confusing and manipulative relationship between these two women. That’s why it’s shot close up with no music, the camera ignoring their bodies to linger on the tension captured on their lips. By leaning in to the fluctuating relationship between these female friends the film rejects the heterosexual framing that would normally be used for a scene like this, instead creating something that’s more ambiguous and fluid. As Carmen Maria Machado puts it, this moment is “what it means to experience parallel sexualities with your best friends as you punch through the last vestiges of childhood, and, significantly, into the central body of water that is bisexuality.”
This movie is neither about nor for men. While the men in Jennifer’s life are just consumable objects to her, it’s the relationship between Needy and Jennifer that’s the heart of the film. At its core this is a messy examination of how female relationships sometimes unravel as girls grow into women, how childhood friendships can be casualties of puberty, as their adolescent dynamic becomes fraught with toxic obsessions, murky boundaries, and divergent definitions of what it means to be a friend and a woman. Reflecting on the legacy of the film, Sarah Fonseca remarks:
”The friends’ storied, passionate relationship (deemed "totally lesbigay" by a classmate early on in the film) is the emotional crux from which Jennifer’s Body’s biggest feminist statements, most of which are skillfully cloaked in fake blood and late aughts band merch, originate: women should always aim to support one another; patriarchy makes friendship between women terribly difficult, and sex with men a bore; survivors are omnipotent; the reckless abandon of teen girls doesn’t justify assault; no one asks to be made into a monster, but no one should be surprised when the monster of their creation invites herself over for dinner. Statements that, during the baffling age that birthed Twilight’s chaste vampire craze, were easier to wave away as “bad movie-making.”
It’s much easier to dismiss movies as bad when they don’t fit neatly into the boxes of marketable genres than it is to wrestle with what they’re trying to say with their complexity and rejection of outdated tropes.
However, this type of forced conformity ultimately hinders creativity and is particularly detrimental to horror movies. The biggest potential of a horror film is its ability to break out of formulas and in so doing be at the vanguard of tricky social issues. Scary movies allow us to shine a light on sensitive aspects of our society related to race, gender, and identity that people are often too squeamish to openly examine. The Babadook explores motherhood, grief, and depression in greater depth and candor than a purely dramatic treatment of this same subject matter would have been able to do. Get Out explores the insidious racism of well-meaning white liberals with precision and intensity that would have been unattainable in any other genre. Many of the best horror films make us confront how the scariest things aren’t unknowns that pop up in the dark, but known parts of ourselves that we hide and repress.
In a post credits scene we see Needy, now a woman firmly in control of her destiny get revenge on the men that preyed on her friend. By the end of the runtime, justice has been served. So too has this film been vindicated by the passage of time and the reclaiming of the narrative surrounding it. Today, fans celebrate it for rejecting “toxic heterosexuality” and have declared it an essential queer horror film. Vox even declared it a feminist cult classic.
Jennifer’s Body was ahead of its time but has since grown into beloved, unique, and striking musing on femininity, adolescence, and sexual violence. From the ashes of its disastrous marketing and release has risen a case study of how audiences can rally around a female-driven project even when the film industry bungles it. What Cody and Fox could have never seen coming in 2009 was how it would also become a cautionary tale about how the film industry fails female actors and storytellers. As we all would learn during #MeToo, some of the most terrifying things in Hollywood happen off screen.
Can’t get enough Jennifer’s Body analysis? Me neither! Check out this candid conversation between screenwriter Diablo Cody and star Megan Fox where they reflect back on the legacy of the film ten years after it came out:
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