Hell is a Teenage Girl.
Jennifer’s Body was released in 2009, starring Amanda Seyfried and Megan Fox and was directed by Karyn Kusama. 2009 was certainly an enigma of a year. Scene Queens ruled the internet and screamo music was all the rage. I was personally working at an F.Y.E. inside a mall and was probably one of the more formative years for my horror obsession. I had access to order films I couldn’t find at my local used movie shops and all for half the price. It was that year I saw Cannibal Holocaust, Dead Alive, and Return of the Living Dead all for the first time.
It was also the year that I got to see Jennifer’s Body in theaters. I should note that I wasn’t the biggest Megan Fox fan at that time. I hadn’t seen any performances that really stood out to me and all of my guy friends only defended her because she was attractive. In all honesty, I was truly just an insecure eighteen year old who had just lost over a hundred pounds and had only seen Transformers. However, I was so intrigued by Jennifer’s Body. Especially when I saw it had a female director attached to it and Diablo Cody, who I practically idolized at that time.
I loved it. Sure some of the special FX were corny, but I was captivated. The soundtrack was music I actually liked and the dialogue had that perfect charm that I admired so much. Oh yeah, and the main characters were awesome.
The story is about two girl friends, Needy and Jennifer, and how they get wrapped up in the world of satanic sacrifice and a boy hungry succubus. I was obsessed. I had already bought an ‘I Eat Boys’ t-shirt from Hot Topic and was blaring the soundtrack in my old ‘97 camry. As soon as I got the chance to brag about the movie, I did. Which I was met with quite a bit of distaste. Specifically from my male friends. They had gone to see the movie as well and their biggest complaint was “Megan Fox didn’t even get naked.” I had always been a kind of head strong individual, but constantly battled with how I was looked at as a female. Especially since I had gone through a pretty massive weight loss. The attention I got was completely different and I was suddenly struggling with why my guy friends were dumping all over what I thought was one of the better horror films I had seen in a long time.
It wasn’t just them though, it was everyone.
The internet was ablaze with hate for the movie. It was getting horrible reviews and people were ripping Megan Fox apart in particular. On rogerebert.com, he even mentions that Megan Fox didn’t get on Maxim’s Hot 100 list for acting. Almost every review I read that was posted within the same month of the film’s release mentioned how poor of an actress Fox was, but at least she was attractive. Someone even noted that Megan Fox not being naked was prudish because it had an R rating so they could have afforded it. That same reviewer compared the film to Hostel, which he now liked more because at least there was nudity.
It’s more than fair to say that the world was not ready for this movie. Men ripped it to shreds. In researching this film, I came across an interview with Megan Fox and Diablo Cody from last year and the two women were unafraid to speak on the torment they were put through during this film. Diablo even mentioned that she had to seek therapy for the criticism and misogyny that she was put through during production and after the release of the film. I was even brought to tears when Megan Fox stated that because of the stigma put on her back in the day, that she felt as if there is no room for her in feminism.
The reason why I picked this movie during horrorbound’s resurrection week wasn’t just for the fact that after a group of indie rock boys sacrifice Jennifer and she is reborn as a flesh eating succubus, but that this movie has risen in the feminist flames in horror history. I have always been a strong defender of Jennifer’s Body as a horror film, but this movie has so much more behind the eviscerated carcasses and witty dialogue.
This movie was formative for me as an eighteen year old girl who was raised to seek constant validation from men. Even though Jennifer is portrayed as the villain in this movie, every re-watch I question who is truly the bad guy in it. The emo boys who brutalize Jennifer even as she begs for them to stop seem to be forgotten and overshadowed by the newly born succubus’s need for flesh. It’s not even as if she is doing this because she wants to, she has to eat people to survive. Sure, her odd infatuation with being better than Needy is certainly not the best motive for her targets, but at the end of the day, it shows how insecure Jennifer really is.
She doesn’t need validation from men, but emotionally feeds off of her best friend’s opinion of her. Once it starts to waiver, she’s hurt and scared and reacts in a way most sixteen year old girls would. As a big Eli Roth and Hostel fan, I completely disagree with it’s comparison to Jennifer’s Body by that other reviewer. If we can compare this movie to anything, I’d double feature it with The Craft. Just strong, young women, trying to find their places in the world. I feel so lucky to see this era of people, both men and women, finding inspiration and love for this film. It deserves all of it and so much more. This film stands up with some of the other great female led horror films and in my opinion, is a crucial film in any horror fan’s line up.
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