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Megan Fox was at the height of her career in 2009. Fans worldwide fell for her womanly wiles after her starring role in 2007’sTransformers. Her sexual appeal is what made her ideal for the role of Jennifer Check in Diablo Cody’s sophomore filmJennifer’s Body. Pairing her with Amanda Seyfried, along with strategic marketing, was a formula for success. Unfortunately,Jennifer’s Bodywasn’t what audiences expected, resulting in poor reviews and an underwhelming box office performance.
Diablo Cody’s first writing credit was the critically acclaimedJuno, which earned her an Oscar.Jennifer’s Body, while maintaining the same kind of clever wit and comedy,branches into the horror genreand has since become a cult classic. It’s a coming-of-age story that follows a pair of girls in high school undergoing challenges that no other high schooler has ever encountered. With Cody returning to the horror-comedy withLisa Frankenstein, it’s time to look back at her first entry into the genre.
What is Jennifer’s Body About?
Jennifer’s Bodyfollows Anita “Needy” Lesnicki (Amanda Seyfried) and her best friend Jennifer Check (Megan Fox). The two couldn’t be more different, with Needy being a band nerd on the lower end of the high school’s hierarchy and Jennifer being near the top as a gorgeous cheerleader. However, there are clear signs that their friendship might be more one-sided than Needy would like to admit, as she allows Jennifer to convince her to do whatever she (Jennifer) wants. The first instance of this is when Jennifer wants to see the band Low Shoulder live, talking Needy into ditching her boyfriend.
The band plays at a small dive bar that looks like duct tape, hopes, and dreams are holding it together. Jennifer gravitates toward the lead singer,played byThe O.C.‘sAdam Brody, who wastes no time in discussing her virginity with his bandmates the moment she’s out of earshot. When the band starts playing their music, the bar goes up in flames. Needy and Jennifer escape through a bathroom window and are instantly met by the lead singer, who is casually drinking a cocktail.
Entranced by the musician, Jennifer hops into his van, where the rest of the band waits. Needy, who hasn’t trusted the indy band since they arrived, tries to talk Jennifer out of the van, but to no avail. The next time Needy sees her best friend is later that night in Needy’s kitchen, but something is clearly off about Jennifer. She’s covered in blood and vomits up black tar.
The next day, Jennifer seems back to normal(ish) with more energy and practically glowing skin. However, there’s something off about her, which Needy recognizes immediately. While the rest of the school and town are mourning the loss of those who perished in the bar fire, Jennifer cracks jokes and shows zero sympathy. To make matters worse, male students from the school start dying off one by one,seemingly by a cannibal, as they’re eviscerated and missing organs.
What Happened to Jennifer?
After the death of one of Needy’s friends, Jennifer divulges the truth to her. When she left the charred remains of the bar with Low Shoulder, they took her out to the woods beside a waterfall. Brody’s character, Niolai Wolf, explains the difficulties indy bands face trying to grow in popularity since they’re a dime a dozen.They decided to turn to Satanbecause that’s reasonable, to make them famous. This meant they had to sacrifice a virgin and Jennifer was their sacrifice.
However, unbeknownst to the band, Jennifer was not a virgin. While this wouldn’t have any direct effect on the band and their ritual, it would keep Jennifer from staying dead permanently. When Needy learns about the ritual, she finds the small occult section in her school library and does some reading.
There, she learns that if the sacrifice is made without a virgin,the human sacrificewill be inhabited by a demon that relies on survival through human flesh. When Jennifer is freshly fed, she looks her best, and she’s invulnerable. However, when she needs to feed again, she’s at her weakest and susceptible to attacks.
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Needy resolves to stop Jennifer from killing anyone else and goes to a school dance to keep an eye on her. However, Jennifer targets Chip (Johnny Simmons), Needy’s boyfriend, and intercepts him before he gets to the dance, bringing him to anabandoned indoor poolwhere she can feed on him in peace. Needy intervenes while Jennifer is biting into Chip’s neck, but before she can finish him off. Chip manages to impale Jennifer with the handle of a broken pool net but misses her heart, giving her a chance to escape.
When Chip dies in Needy’s arms, she decides to end Jennifer’s reign of terror once and for all. She finds Jennifer at home in bed and attacks her with a box cutter. They struggle briefly, with Jennifer biting Needy on the shoulder, but Needy ultimately stabs her BFF in the heart just in time for Jennifer’s mom to walk in and misinterpret the whole situation.This lands Needy in a psychiatric clinic, where she’s no longer the permissive, nerdy teenage girl everybody knew her as.
Needy is not only more confident and aggressive, becoming known as a “kicker” amongst the orderlies, but she also has some new gifts. By surviving a bite from the demonic Jennifer, a form of transference took place and gave Needy all of the same abilities Jennifer had (flight, invulnerability, and rapid healing) without the need to feed on human flesh. She uses these abilities to escape and hunt down Low Shoulder for everything they caused. During the ending credits, the band is enjoying their fame with drugs and alcohol in a hotel room, only for Needy to interrupt them and brutally murder each of them.
Above all else,Jennifer’s Bodywas a commentary on how society views the female body. The band obsesses over Jennifer’s virginity much in the same way MTV and other media outlets fetishized the virginity ofBritney Spears, Christina Aguilera, and Jessica Simpson. The film flips this viewpoint on its head by having Jennifer’s sexuality empower her.
It’s her sexuality that saves her from death. Even the studio marketed the film toward heterosexual men, highlighting Megan Fox’s sexual appeal and a shared kiss with Amanda Seyfried. Moviegoers had their expectations subverted, leading to a barrage of poor reviews across the internet since the writer and director clearly geared the film for a different audience.
Jennifer’s Body ties in to Lisa Frankenstein
Jennifer’s Bodyscribe Diablo Cody returns to the horror-comedy genre withLisa Frankenstein, a modernization ofMary Shelley’s 1818 horror classicFrankenstein. It’s a film set in the ’80s that examines the experiences of a high school girl. Having a high school setting isn’t the only similarityLisa Frankensteinshares withJennifer’s Body. Cody toldDeadlinethat the two horror films occur in the same universe.
I am just declaring that this movie takes place in the same universe. I have decided that. I will not say that you’d see any overt references to that but I’m saying it.
Cody goes on to talk about a newfound audience for her 2009 film sparking interest in either a reboot ofJennifer’s Bodyor an expansion of the universe. When Cody first madeJennifer’s Body, audiences weren’t ready for its message of female empowerment. Now, with the rise of the #MeToo movement, the film has garnered attention from its originally targeted audience.
