Jennifer’s Body

I FINALLY watched this after wanting to see it since its release six years ago today. The titular character mentions the popularity of a band’s ~Myspace~ page…

So, yeah. I’m a bit behind.

Goddamn, I am impressed at how well Megan Fox can do creepy, though. I think she excelled. We all knew she could do “high school evil,” but to see her pull off demonic evil was a fun treat. She has this moment where she stands in the dark, staring vacantly at Amanda Seyfried’s character while a demented smile slowly seeps across her bloodied face to reveal her horrifying red teeth. That moment is scarier than the last shot in Paranormal Activity, which would’ve had the edge if not for the shitty CG they smeared onto the last half second.

Critics who panned this movie referred to Heathers a lot, but since I haven’t seen that movie all I could think about was Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Cody stated that when writing the script, she was “simultaneously trying to pay tribute to some of the conventions that we’ve already seen in horror, yet, at the same time, kind of turn them on their ear”. She “had never really seen this particular subgenre done with girls and [she] tried to do a little of both”. 

Roberts, Sheila (2009). “Megan Fox, Diablo Cody Interview, Jennifers Body”. MoviesOnline. Retrieved 2009-09-26.

Yeah. Clearly she never watched Buffy.

“We wanted to subvert the classic horror model of women being terrorized. I want to write roles that service women. I want to tell stories from a female perspective. I want to create good parts for actresses where they’re not just accessories to men.”

Kwan, Jennifer (2009-09-14). “Cody exorcises demons from “Jennifer’s Body””. Reuters. Retrieved 2009-09-23.

Noble and worthy endeavors. I’m not faulting the producers for their intent – we’ll always need such stories and roles – I’m just disappointed that it seems like they didn’t do more research into what was already out there.

One of my biggest beefs with this film was that rather than swinging whole-heartedly into either the horror or comedy lane, it devoted itself to the middle of the road for some reason. Like it was scared of revealing its true self. That irony is unfortunate because the movie was almost funny in places, and actually creepy in rare others.

The scene where you first see Jennifer feed could’ve been cult-classic funny if the comedy had been allowed to breathe. Cute animals mysteriously gathering to watch a demon waste her prey? Brilliant. Usually the forest goes eerily quiet and the animals flee for their safety when the undetected threat is about to strike. What killed the laugh before it could manifest? I blame the editing and score.

A lot of the praise Jennifer’s Body received was due to the dialog, roundly described as witty.

I have to disagree. Now I liked Juno’s dialog and I really enjoyed the lines in Young Adult, but Jennifer’s Body was full of duds. I think Cody’s sin was condescension toward her characters, more than occasionally shoving vapid drivel into their mouths because they were teenage girls. Particularly in the abandoned pool scene.

Uhm. Sick burn.

I guess the root shortcoming in this movie was how hard it was to like the lead characters. Of course I didn’t have to like Megan Fox or her character (thanks to my internalized misogyny about women who are prettier or more successful). But I sympathized when shit got real the night she became a demon. It was Amanda Seyfried’s “Needy” whom I was supposed to like but couldn’t.

She was typical-horror-movie dumb, doomed to make dipshit moves in order to move the plot along. The prime example being a riff on the ol’ Splitting Up When We Should Stick Together routine. It was infuriating, but I could almost forgive it if the character hadn’t been annoying up to that point, having shallow reactions to horrifying incidents, missing emotional marks… I feel like these things could’ve worked if the movie’s awareness of its own camp had been fully realized.

All said, the film did examine parasitic relationships between young women from a female-friendly perspective. The filmmakers’ hearts were in the right place overall, and down the road I would eagerly shell out more time and money to see them take another stab at this genre. The plot was good and the teenage point of view was thrilling in a familiar kind of way. I knew girls like Jennifer. I was a girl like Needy. I would have adored this film had it been made fifteen years ago.

Diablo Cody hoped for a few things in the audience’s reaction, and I did feel some of it as the credits rolled.

“If I had gone to this movie as a teenage girl, I would’ve come out of it feeling totally inspired”, she stated. “I would’ve wanted to write, I would’ve wanted to create and I would’ve felt like I watched something that was speaking to me.”

Kwan, Jennifer (2009-09-14). “Cody exorcises demons from “Jennifer’s Body””. Reuters. Retrieved 2009-09-23.

I’m a harsh critic when it comes to movies and I’m especially critical of horror. This is because I love it so much; I want it to succeed more than it fails. I want to figure out what makes the good stuff work and how to replicate and proliferate that because yeah, I want to make my own horror movies, too. Part of me thinks I’m ready for some random jackass like myself to tear my work apart – work that I poured my heart and soul into and bet my self-worth on – but a bigger part of me is terrified of failing the very storytelling experience I love so much.

I’m glad this film with its various flaws was made anyway. I prefer a world in which Jennifer’s Body missed the mark to a world where it never happened at all.