I Slept on Jennifer's Body

On top of my love for trash and my love for rom coms, I adore horror. A specific kind of horror but I adore it. Supernatural and paranormal stuff is my jam. This movie is right up my alley but I avoided it like the plague. Why? Well, the 2000s were a lot. There was a major boom in sex comedies, and the culture at the time was awash with teen boy fantasies. I can remember several shows that aired geared specifically toward the dude bro demographic, The Man Show, Manswers, Keys to the VIP, all schlocky bro fests designed to make guys think they needed to be awash in a sea of bimbos who were all too eager to be with them if only they'd use the right line on them or make enough money. In a word, it was a gross and confusing time to be a girl. You were told that you had to be hot to be anything but also if you were hot, you were a clueless slut who deserved what was coming to her. It sucked and it also lead to a lot of internalized misogyny of my own that I had to work hard to unlearn for my own health and sanity.

With all the talk about Britney and how she was treated by the press, I remembered something else that troubled me. Megan Fox. I was told to hate her. Not literally but the way the media painted her, she was a thing to be ogled by men and loathed by women Transformers didn't help and it's a shame because she's actually really likable and charming in that movie and Lindsay Ellis does a great breakdown of how the camera work undermined Megan's entire character

So, all I remembered of that movie was that she was "hot girl" and the camera leered at her body a lot. Then came ads for Jennifer's Body and its marketing was bad. It focused on her being sexy, girls making out, anything to attract teen boys and so, I thought it wasn't a movie for me. It was just going to be a gratuitous T&A fest with some horror and avoided it. But it always nagged at the back of my head as a curiosity. Then I saw Megan's interview with Jimmy Kimmel (who was an alum of The Man Show, I might add) and how he laughed away her story of how Michael Bay put her in a bikini under a waterfall when told she was too young to be in a bar. I saw her face fall and I just felt this wave of empathy for her. She was trying to say something serious about how she was treated in the industry and Jimmy and his audience laughed at her because yeah, of course she should be sexualized. It was gross and I again, I thought about the movie, it stuck out in my mind because it really did seem like something I would like but the marketing had been so obnoxiously aimed at teen boys that I just thought I'd hate it.

Curiosity finally got the better of me and I finally watched Jennifer's Body and it was not at all what the advertisements pitched it as. No, it was 100% the type of movie I love and it honestly makes everything that happened to Megan Fox's career even more infuriating. Jennifer's Body was not for teen boys (though I'm sure there are some that liked it). It was a movie made especially for girls. The entire movie can be read as an allegory for how going through a traumatic event can change who you are. In fact there are a ton of great messages in this movie. From learning to deal with your repressed desires, not idolizing and trusting famous people, and learning to come into your own and make your own decisions.

That being said, there are some elements of this film that have not aged the best. Be forewarned there is a casual r-word tossed out and sometimes the cutesy, too-hip dialogue can be grating but, at its core, I loved what this movie was trying to explore.

Jennifer is not a good person, but she's a very real person who did not deserve to be used in the way that she was. I do wish we had gotten to know Jennifer just a bit more pre-trauma so that we could really get a sense of how she'd changed but I doubt that was really the point. I really think that they wanted to show that even if Jennifer acted horribly, was snobbish or manipulative, she still deserved her agency. She still deserved some compassion. What happens to her is horrific and it did change her, quite literally. And in her trauma, she attacks the people who hurt her, namely boys. I don't think they could have picked a more perfect person than Megan Fox for this role either. This is her favourite role and it's not hard to see why. She is great in this and has been great in most of the thing's I've seen her in. I feel like the 2000s kind of brainwashed us all into seeing her as just some dumb bimbo and I fully blame Michael Bay for that. I'm slowly waking up from my naughty noughties thinking and I hope you all do too.

Amanda Seyfried is also great as the quiet and reserved, Needy. A very on the nose name for her character as she is very infatuated with her friend and its pretty clear that even if she has a boyfriend, she has some strong attachment to Jennifer that reads as suppressed attraction. Watching her character evolve into a stronger and more confident person is extremely engaging even if the ending goes a little insane.

This isn't a brilliant or deep movie but it has a surprising amount of heart and gives us a different perspective on the vengeance narrative. I note that in a lot of other vengeance horror, there is a lot of emphases placed on the initial attack scene, specifically giving us a voyeuristic view where we're almost inserted into the attacker's POV. All to give a male audience a glimpse at some breasts which feels very anti-victim. In this movie, the attack is framed absolutely from Jennifer's POV and you feel her fear and horror and desperation. It should also be noted that it is very much an allegory for a gang rape but is not actually presented as such so it doesn't stray into male gaze territory which, in my opinion, makes it even more horrifying.

In short, I'm happy that I finally watched this when young me was so against it. It's a great horror film in the same vein as Idle Hands or Ginger Snaps. If you like horror comedies, and you haven't seen Jennifer's Body, give it a chance. You really can't judge a book by its cover, or a movie by it's very poor advertising.