Over ten years ago, Jennifer’s Body was released with almost unanimous distaste from the general audience. The critics rated it 44% in Rotten Tomatoes, while the audience score wasn’t any better with a 33% rating. Within the next few years, tides changed and this horror-comedy flick had garnered a whole new wave of positive feedback. Before we knew it, Jennifer’s Body became a quotable, feminist commentary wrapped up in 2000s absurdist comedy that the internet became obsessed with.
Jennifer’s Body is arguably good now, but how did we get here?
The journey to get to its cult classic status was a difficult one, to say the least. When the movie was first pitched, director Karyn Kusama and screenwriter Diablo Cody had hoped to create a movie that was aimed toward teenage girls. Unfortunately, the studio executives had other plans which led to the movie’s demise in its initial release. Since Megan Fox was cast as the lead, Jennifer Check, the studio had wanted to capitalize on Fox’s sex appeal. Michael Bay’s over-sexualization of Fox in the Transformers movies had followed much of her career outside of the franchise. The executives capitalized on this so that instead of marketing this movie to teenage girls, they advertised it as a “sexy” Megan Fox movie for straight teen boys. The studio had sabotaged their own movie before it had even been fully filmed. There’s no wonder as to why it wasn’t commercially successful. The reviews that came out in 2009 were riddled with misogynistic comments written by men who did not understand the movie. Everyone, except the women that were involved in this project, did not comprehend what this movie stood for, which was its ultimate downfall.
So, what is Jennifer’s Body anyway? The movie focused on two best friends who were polar opposites in personality and social status. We have nerdy, quiet girl Needy, played by Amanda Seyfried, and Jennifer Check, played by Megan Fox. They were inseparable friends, up until Jennifer became a man-eating succubus after an indie rock band had mistakenly sacrificed her to Satan as a virgin for fame. This was never a sexy movie to begin with. The movie dove into a codependent, obsessive friendship, that at times, was littered with queer coding and romantic elements. It was about Jennifer owning her own body after it had been violently massacred by a group of narcissistic men. Diablo Cody said it best in an interview, “This movie is a commentary on girl-on-girl hatred, sexuality, the death of innocence, and also politics in the way the town responds to the tragedies [of the bloody deaths of several young men]. Any person who dares to respond in an unconventional way is branded a traitor. It’s also just about fun — I wanted to write a really entertaining popcorn movie.” It wasn’t just another opportunity to ogle Megan Fox’s body. Her character had depth and trauma that was misconstrued by pathetic advertising and studio executive meddling.
This movie gained more praise and traction after the rise of the #MeToo movement and was then reclaimed by the queer community. This movie was a caricature of a woman’s sexual assault journey. Her sacrifice was depicted as gruesome and traumatic, but worst of all, it gave those men power and a better career. Jennifer becoming a man-eating demon was a representational fight against the patriarchy. Jennifer’s Body was never meant to be a sex fantasy aimed at boys; it was a revenge fantasy for women who have been wronged. The kiss between Amanda Seyfried and Megan Fox had been framed in such a way that was meant to entice teenage boys, but it ultimately became a moment of sapphic awakening for a lot of young queer women. The scene was shot under the female gaze for women and further developed the romantic themes of Jennifer and Needy’s friendship. Critics only ever saw this scene as bait and despised it, while the queer community thought it was a great scene that expanded on subtext. This is only scratched the surface of how multifaceted this movie is. When I had first watched this movie, I was in the sixth grade. I had immediately fallen in love with it. My friend and I had bonded over how much we loved it because of its themes of women empowerment and how a teenage girl could be a manifestation of hell itself. We were obsessed with the idea. This just proved that this movie has a way of communicating a woman’s fantasy to go against the grain and become something men feared, which is why it has become such a cult classic. For everything that Jennifer’s Body is, one thing’s for sure – it was ahead of its time.