The Makers of Juno Dabble in Horror: Jennifer's Body

---contains spoilers for Jennifer's Body---

Few things are as ingrained in the horror fan’s imagination as the ad campaigns for scary movies released when we were too chicken-shit for the genre. Whether glimpsed in the late lamented Blockbusters, movie theaters, or poorly timed trailers, nothing will ever be half as scary as we imagined those movies to be. Here’s to you, obtuse Silent Hill poster, slasher franchise reboots that made me think Freddy and Jason were twenty-first century inventions, ten-second Saw sequel trailer I saw in the video store, and 1997 film Jack Frost. And here’s to you, Jennifer’s Body.

            I was just barely twelve when Jennifer’s Body was released to sexy, sexy ad campaigns and tepid reviews. I remember casting judgment on a friend who’d been allowed to see it and who raved about how good it was. I’m not sure why I got the impression that this was a gross-out pic (by any standard, it’s pretty tame) but it was probably from misinterpreting the title, which implied not only dismemberment but sexploitation, offending both my wimp and protefeminist sensibilities. The newspaper told me the basic plot, ‘hot girl gets possessed by demon’, but because demon possession to me meant Linda Blair, I figured that the hotness factor wouldn’t last past the first twenty minutes, so what were the posters, and my friend from school, so worked up about.

            Recently, the movie came to my attention again when I saw it on a list of horror movies directed by women – in this case, Karyn Kusama. (Considering the criminal scarcity of women directors in mainstream Hollywood, the fact that there are a fair number of women working in the horror genre is notable, and kinda proves the title of this blog). A woman making potentially subversive exploitation films wouldn’t be a first. That’s literally Stephanie Rothman’s career story, but Rothman was fairly ambivalent about these movies and they were usually commissioned and written by men. Jennifer’s Body on the other hand boasts a female screenwriter – Diablo Cody, none other than the exalted screenwriter of Juno. This fact, it seems, was not a huge part of the marketing kick. (That title, by the way, comes from a song by Country Love’s band, Hole, about a woman held captive). In interviews, both Kusama and Cody didn’t frame their movie as the next Barbarella, nor did they highlight its appeal to young men, or the undeniable sex appeal of their star. Instead, they stated in no uncertain terms that the movie was made with young women in mind as a feminist response to the genre.

            As I correctly gleaned from the newspaper review, the film does involve the titular Jennifer possessed by a demon. This happens not because she played with a Ouija Board or otherwise ~transgressed~, but because a terrible emo/indie band tried to sacrifice her to Satan for fame and fortune. Newly cannibalistic and superpowered, Jen eats boys to maintain her vitality and aforementioned sex appeal. The movie mainly follows her mousy but sexually active BFF Needy, played by a not-actually-mousy-but-bespectacled Amanda Seyfried. Jen chooses her victims based on guys Needy’s soft on, eventually chomping down on her milquetoast boyfriend, so Needy kills her. Now with demon superpowers thanks to a plot device stolen from every werewolf film ever, Needy breaks out of incarceration to turn the indie band into some artistic and satisfying smears of blood.

            In the role of the succubus is Megan Fox, just after Transformers skyrocketed her to peak sex symbol. Fox playing a teenage cheerleader cannibal is a sexploitation film’s wet dream, and so the movie was marketed as one, with posters of Fox in miniskirt and crop top posing on a teacher’s desk and licking blood off her lips. Coverage and reviews emphasized Fox’s sexed-up character, and scenes like her seduction of Needy that might appeal to a certain kind of viewer. So instead of the film entering the world with emphasis on its privileging of an intense and fraught friendship between two female characters, who are allowed narrative and sexual agency, or it’s predominantly female creative team, it ended up looking like a sex romp with cannibalism. This mismatch of expectation to reality might have contributed to the lukewarm audience and critical response.

            Not to say it’s a perfect film – quite the opposite. There's a clunky voiceover / framing device, paper thin supporting characters, and pieces of exposition or character development that seem to be missing. Surely the shittastic indie band started the fire that allows them to kidnap Jennifer, but that’s never confirmed. The kidnapping scene itself is weirdly limp. Worst of all, Jennifer feels like she’s missing some characterization and backstory, as if somewhere in the editing room someone figured that she was gorgeous enough for us to care about her no matter what. But the moments that are good are something special. The make-out scene between Jennifer and Needy was criticized as a publicity grab by some, but it reads (at least to me) as a refreshingly frank expression of an intense and homoerotic relationship. That’s where Jennifer’s Body’s sexpoloitation tendencies are an asset – a more mainstream film might play that more coy, for fear of being called tasteless. And it underlines an implicit point in the movie’s feminism – that the cheesecake shots of Megan Fox in a miniskirt might not be for men at all, that women might want to see a beautiful woman on screen, even/especially if she spends most of the movie devouring men.

            The best scene though is the sequence of Jennifer’s sacrifice. In an odd bit of pacing, it comes in flashback in the middle of the film, after Jen’s already vomited ichor and tasted human flesh. The indie boys crack wise with the darkest and funniest lines. It’s a Bowie knife, says one. Cool, Bowie, replies the other. They’re dipshits, but Jennifer’s outnumbered and tied-up. In the scene’s jaw-dropping climax, they stab the fuck out of Jennifer while singing 867-5309. It’s a perfect moment because of the lightness with which the boys value the sacrifice, the lack of value they place on Jennifer’s small-town female life. It makes Jennifer’s rage, her hunger, the glee with which she burns her invulnerable tongue and pronounces herself a God feel deserved. I do wish the film had rubbed our faces in that a little bit more, as they do at the very end with the glorious and cathartic sequence of Needy’s revenge.

            I do have to wonder about the boys and men who went to see Jennifer’s Body expecting some light titillation and discovered a movie that has no place for them. Seriously, the only men in this movie are victims or villains. Mothers mourn, do their daughters hair, and walk in at the wrong time, but it’s a movie strangely devoid of fathers – no one has daddy issues, and no burly father emerges to order Jen to wear something more conservative. Men don’t join in, intrude, or interrupt Needy and Jennifer’s brief moment of passion – instead, it’s their moment. It’s also the only scene of intimacy for Jennifer that doesn’t end with someone getting disemboweled, because unquestionably her most important relationship is her friendship with Needy. For the most part, Jennifer doesn’t even choose her victims based on their sins, but because Needy likes them – they’re passive as can be. In going to see Jennifer’s Body, it’s like these boys bought a ticket to see Lara Croft, and walked into Teeth.

            Many of Diablo Cody’s other films have been met with a far more positive response. There’s Juno, most famously, the award-laden Young Adult, and this year’s Tully, which has been lavished with critical attention. Cody’s made something of a brand (ugh, sorry, I hate that word) on movies about women in familiar positions but with unusual attitudes towards them. A pregnant teenager who takes her pregnancy in stride, an adult woman who struggles to adjust, a mother of three who’s not quite overjoyed with motherhood. As her career continues, it’s likely that Jennifer’s Body will be overlooked, edited out, or misconstrued as some kind of sell-out mistake. That would be a shame. In its own twisted way, it fits that brand perfectly. It’s a movie about a woman in the familiar position of enduring and surviving violence who responds with the unusual solution of eating others. And with its own flaws and missteps, it invites further work in a very special horror genre about the hell of teenage girls.

(if yr so inclined, Jennifer’s Body can be watched on HBOGo).     

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