Jennifer’s Body

Jennifer’s Body is a 2009 American supernatural horror black comedy film. The movie tells a story of A newly possessed high school cheerleader turns into a succubus who specializes in killing her male classmates.

Jennifer’s Body Movie Cast

Jennifer’s Body Movie Review

 Jennifer’s body movie was directed by Karyn Kusama written by Diablo Cody and stars Amanda Seifert and Megan fox.

Its a story of 2 high school best friends who know each other there for whole lives. Needy played by Seyfried and Jennifer played by fox.

On one innocent night, the two girls go to a bar to see an indie rock band called low shoulder the entire place burns down, but the lead singer insists on taking Jennifer with him and his creepy van and to get separated.

When Jennifer shows up later that night she’s covered in blood eating chicken off the floor and barking up black liquid. And soon enough she gets an appetite for human flesh.

Jennifer’s body is a very unique film and that it has gone through quite the evolution in regards to how it was received. Initially, the film was received very poorly and there’s still a lot of people who don’t like this movie.

Critics didn’t like it all that much. People have not liked it all that much either. I first saw it a few years ago when my wife showed it to me. one of our earlier Halloween specials we did call scary movie binge she wanted me to see Jennifer’s body. I had never seen it because of that reaction.

Sometimes when the public really hates a movie, I’m like out whatever I’ll check it out anyway. You know sometimes opinions differ, but everybody seemed to hate this movie. So I skipped it. I didn’t watch it.

Over the years, I have wanted to watch the movie consistently more often. Since then I’ve seen it 3 times. I’ve watched that feature commentary. I’ve shown it to friends. I’ve watched it again on my own and I’ve really come to love this movie.

I think that it’s massively misunderstood and extremely miss marketed. At twentieth century fox in their marketing department decided to rely entirely on the sex appeal of Megan fox.

She was fresh off of transformers the time and that is all they cared about. Nearly every poster sold the film in that way as did the trailers.

The Blu ray for this movie actually has a special feature entitled Megan fox is hot. I’m not kidding. You play it and it’s essentially an anime music video montage sequence of Megan fox looking sexy from the movie, that’s all it is.

And by far the most embarrassing thing that twentieth century fox suggested was that Megan fox appear during live streams on porn sites to promote the movie. I’m not making this up.

They completely didn’t get what they have with Jennifer’s body and they ruin this movie for a long time.

It’s been recently the film has been re-evaluated more by people mostly by female critics. Jennifer’s body is the film that 2019 is black Christmas wishes it was. It’s gorgeously directed.

The cinematography is actually really good. I know this is strange to hear because the film has this unwarranted reputation, but it’s entirely because of an image that a studio constructed for this movie, that it wasn’t even trying to be.

So a lot of people went to this film expecting either a horror film only. Megan fox is really attractive to the whole thing. This is a dark comedy Diablo Cody’s films like Juno or young adults all have a very subversive edgy bite to them.

In Jennifer’s body literally has bite, but the humor is also very much so like that and if you’re not on that wavelength or you don’t prefer that kind of dialogue that’s understandable to be very on the nose.

Characters refer to themselves as female health care products Nick names and stuff like that throughout most of the movie, and sometimes that can be a little much.

But what I love about this movie is surprisingly Megan fox is excellent. She plays a character that is so tragically obsessed with her self image that she can’t even come to terms with the fact that her friend who socially is a lower on the totem pole than her as a loving relationship with her boyfriend ship played by Johnny Simmons is smarter than her and is probably going to be more successful than her in the future.

The way I look at this relationship between needy and Jennifer in the movie as as sort of like that high school friend that you have, and then when you graduate you’re starting to move on maybe you’re going to college or getting a job or your life is starting but your friend is still kind of acting like they’re in high school. Because they just don’t want it to end.

That’s the way I view these 2 characters. It seems like a ventrally that’s where things are going to go for them.

Jennifer’s body purposely takes horror tropes are used to seeing in movies like this and turns them around. And most of it is because it is from a female perspective.

For instance, once Jennifer gets an appetite for flash, she tends to lower a boys to places. She takes one boy into the woods by saying Hey let’s go sort some stuff out and he just follows her.

She does the same thing with another boy and he just goes along with it. When she invites one boy to what he thinks is her house that ends up being on an undeveloped street filled with houses that have no residency yet.

Leading him to an unoccupied house with a light on upstairs and he just willingly goes inside, because he thinks he’s about to get some.

If you just flip that for any other horror film no girl whatever convincingly just follow some guy into the woods twice or into a weird abandoned house.

Because Jennifer’s victims don’t view her as a threat, because she’s a girl and because they want to have sex. that’s really clever something else the film den.

It’s a bit of a similar statement that the movie cherry falls made, which is a 2000 American slasher film.

Cherry Falls was a not that great slasher movie that actually never had a theatrical release and eventually went to the USA network starring the late great Britney Murphy.

And that movie the killer was going after virgins only, so everybody in the school is like we need to lose our virginity right now to save our lives. Which goes completely against every horror movie ever, where the people who are having sex regularly are usually the people to die first.

It was sort of this golden grain message that premarital sex is bad and if you do it you’re gonna die.

And this one has a similar theme as well and I’m gonna talk about that now it’s going to involve some spoilers.

So if you never seen the film that’s your warning. I do recommend it. I think that it is way better than people say. I think in the future will be regarded more highly than it is now.

When Jennifer and Needy meet this indie rock band, they think that Jennifer’s a virgin and Jennifer is not. In fact, needy overhears this tells Jennifer I think you’re a virgin “she’s like What!”. It’s kind of funny.

When they take their in their van later, she begins to realize she’s made a big mistake and she thinks that her defense is saying I’m a virgin. 

But in reality that’s exactly what they want to hear because they want to sacrifice a virgin. They’re agents of Satan and if they can just sacrifice one. Their indie rock band will be successful. Because it’s really hard out there for indie rock bands nowadays which is also so hilarious.

The point being is that if she had just been honest and said that she’s lost her virginity since junior high, she would even say it.

The film isn’t saying that having sex before marriage is bad. It’s actually kind of endorsing it. So naturally you know some people will probably not like that and some people don’t like that, but that’s fine it’s a movie.

And it definitely wasn’t lost on me that a bunch of dudes are offering up a woman on a sacrificial altar to achieve professional success.

The point is this movie was ahead of its time and the films that we get nowadays like 2019 black Christmas are so aggressive and so angry with their message that they alienate a large portion of the audience.

Jennifer’s body didn’t. This is a movie that anybody can watch. You know just from my perspective, there’s a great male character in this movie.

Chip played by Johnny Simmons is actually a genuinely good guy and him and Needy have a loving healthy romantic relationship with one another.

In fact, at the end of the film when ship becomes the classic damsel in distress and Needy has to run to rescue him. I’m actually really sad when he dies because he’s such a nice wholesome character, that you don’t see that much in movies like this.

And since we’re talking about spoilers if you don’t know, Jennifer’s a succubus since she wasn’t a virgin and this indie rock band sacrificed her.

She came back to life so she needs flash to sustain her life and so every once in awhile if she hasn’t eaten she starts to look really drained and very pale.

And theirs is really sad scene where she’s putting make up all over her face to try to hide that and the sadness is heightened by the fact that her desk is filled with photographs of herself.  It’s like that’s all she cares about it Sir image how she looks.

Also JK Simmons has the most hilarious wig in this movie. Look at that hairpiece, I I love it. I look at look at him.

Something else I like about the film is that it opens with Needy in an institution and you can tell that something happened to her. She kicks the shut out of this orderly.

And you think it’s done for shock value or comedy because the oracle he flies back pretty far then she punches a tether ball and it just breaks and again it seems kind of like it’s for comedy.

But at the end of the film you realize that after she fought with Jennifer and killed her she gained some of Jennifer’s powers.

So that kick and punching the tether ball and breaking, it is not just for comedy. It’s because she’s super strong now and I love when films can have something presented in one way and then just have it mean something completely different when you watch it again.

Listing to the director and writer talk about this film on the commentary you can tell they’re frustrated. There’s many portions the route where they say that shot that should have been the poster. I wish that was in the trailer. I wish that was on a Billboard.

And you can tell that they were frustrated by the way twentieth century fox promoted this movie to people.

To put it in perspective on the audio commentary cards Sama said that this was one of the first shots they films because she knew that if they show the studio Megan fox walking down a hallway in slow motion that would satiate them and they’d leave her alone.

That’s pretty sad if you ask me. It was promoted mostly to boys 12 to 14 year olds who can’t even see the movie unless the parents with them.

That was a giant mistake I think it’s taken 11 years honestly for people to actually start to appreciate Jennifer’s body for what it is. Even the first time I saw I thought it was alright, it’s just it really just stayed with me and I wanted to watch it every once in awhile.

Like once a year and I just kept watching it to the point where I realized that this movie has a lot more to offer than most films of its type. I’m gonna give Jennifer’s Body film an A-minus.

If you hated this movie the first time you saw it, maybe check it out again. Just distance yourself from the marketing. Take it out of context from its time and forget about the imagery that the marketing try to sell this movie as and just watch the movie as a dark comedy with horror elements.

Guys, thank you so much for continuing to read the Halloween special Movies Reviews. I hope you’re enjoying it. See you next time.