'Jennifer's Body' Is a Criminally Underrated Megan Fox Movie
She literally eats boys in it. What's not to love?
I am by no means the only person who thinks Jennifer’s Body is one of the most severely underrated movies made this century, but that doesn’t mean I won’t take every opportunity to shout about how great it is until it gets as regular a rotation on cable as Halloween or Scream. It is perfect, hilarious, genius, flawless, and just about every other positive adjective you can list.
Jennifer’s Body totally flopped at the box office when it premiered in 2009, and though box-office returns often tell you nothing about a movie’s quality, this was one of those cases where a healthy opening might have helped. It’s one of the rare horror movies that was both written and directed by a woman, and anticipation was extra high thanks to screenwriter Diablo Cody’s recent Oscar win for the Juno screenplay. Given Hollywood’s tendency to look at a flop and say, “Whoa, let’s not try that again,” it was a little disheartening that Jennifer’s Body fared as poorly as it did. People who saw it, however, found out what the rest of you were missing.
Megan Fox plays Jennifer, a super-hot cheerleader who likes teasing boys and hanging out with her bookish BFF Needy (a made-under Amanda Seyfried). One night Jennifer and Needy go see a band called Low Shoulder, fronted by a guy named Nikolai (Adam Brody, in more eyeliner than any one person should wear). After the club burns down from a mysterious fire, Jennifer disappears with the Low Shoulder guys, only to show up later in Needy’s kitchen vomiting black bile. Jennifer, you see, has been possessed, and the only thing that can feed her newly demonic soul is human flesh — specifically male human flesh.
Jennifer the boy-eating cheerleader is without question the role Megan Fox was born to play. She’s sassy and sarcastic enough to nail every bit of Diablo Cody’s signature slang-heavy dialogue, but still vulnerable and sweet to the point that you root for her even as she’s ripping dudes’ throats out with her teeth. I also cannot understate how satisfying it is to see Adam Brody play a villain, especially if you’re someone who spent the mid-2000s lusting after Seth Cohen, who in hindsight was definitely the kind of man who would “actually” you during every conversation you had about music, movies, TV, and books. (The havoc that fictional asshole wreaked on the dating lives of every woman I know is the real horror here.)
Though Jennifer’s flesh-eating antics are terrifying and the thing that makes this movie “scary,” her relationship with Needy is what elevates it above your usual demon narratives. Jennifer and Needy have one of those super-intense, codependent friendships that many women have experienced in real life — you’d do anything for this person, but you also kind of want to punch her in the face. This tension comes to a head during an infamous makeout scene between Megan and Amanda that was heavily featured in the movie’s marketing to appeal to the horny teen contingent, but in context, it’s less titillating than it is weirdly relatable.
As horror movies go, Jennifer’s Body is not actually that scary in the traditional sense. There are some jump scares and the aforementioned flesh-eating and black bile, but if you were doing a double feature, it would go better with Mean Girls than it would Paranormal Activity. Still, if you’ve ever had that friend, it might scare you more than the goriest slasher movie (and at the very least will teach you some new catchphrases).
