I really enjoyed director Jason Reitman and screenwriter Diablo Cody's movie Juno when it was released in 2007 (and continue to enjoy it so much that I recently wrote a Film Appreciation article on the film), and was rooting for Cody to win the Oscar when she was nominated for the Best Original Screenplay award. After she did take home the gold, the duo endeared themselves to me even more with the project they chose to follow Juno up with: the horror movie Jennifer's Body. If you choose to make a horror movie immediately after winning an Oscar, you must be a person after my own heart.
Reitman didn't direct Jennifer's Body, he passed those duties over to Karyn Kusama while producing the film, but Kusama did an awesome job bringing another great Diablo Cody script to the screen.
Jennifer's Body stars Amanda Seyfried as "Needy" Lesnicki, a bookish high school student who has been best friends with the wild and inappropriate Jennifer Check (Megan Fox) since childhood. It's clear they would not be friends if they had met later in life, because they're very different from each other and Jennifer is kind of awful and demanding. When Needy agrees to accompany Jennifer to a dive bar to see Low Shoulder, an indie rock band Jennifer found on MySpace (very firmly setting the film in its release year of 2009), their lives completely fall apart.
Low Shoulder's lead singer Nikolai (Adam Brody) couldn't be lamer or sleazier, but Jennifer falls for his act - and is so enamored that she even catches a ride in the band's van after the show has to be cut short because the bar bursts into flames, resulting in the deaths of multiple patrons. The next time Needy sees her longtime friend, something is very different about Jennifer. There are times when she seems like a wild beast, but even when they're at school and Jennifer is acting like everything's normal, she's still not herself. She's even more uncaring than ever before.
Soon enough we'll come to find out why Nikolai was interested in Jennifer specifically because he thought she was a virgin: it's because Low Shoulder was planning to make a virgin sacrifice to the devil so they would receive fame and fortune in return. The fame and fortune does come for them, but Jennifer was not a virgin. As she confides in Needy, she wasn't even a "backdoor virgin". That's why she didn't die as intended. Instead, her body is now inhabited by a demonic entity. She has become a succubus that needs to regularly consume victims, and she starts eating their school's male students. For once in her life, Needy is going to have to stand up to Jennifer so she can stop her now-evil friend.
Jennifer's Body was not a hit when it came out, it sort of seemed to get instantly disregarded and has only started to get some respect a decade after its release. But as a Juno fan, I was hyped for this as soon as it was announced and was there to see it opening weekend - and enjoyed it so much that I not only went back for a second viewing (with my mom in tow that time), I also bought the soundtrack and listened to it regularly for a while. The movie's a lot of fun, and really well written; you can tell it's from the same writer as Juno, as it feels very much like a horror movie set in that same world. It has the same sense of humor as Cody and Reitman's previous collaboration, and is packed with great, humorous dialogue.
Seyfried makes for a terrific horror heroine, and Fox is really good in the role of Jennifer. Part of the reason why the movie failed is because it seemed to be marketed primarily as the movie where you may or may not see Fox naked (she does take her clothes off, but the nudity is obscured) and will definitely see her kiss Amanda Seyfried... and apparently those things weren't much of a draw. It's a shame that was the focus, though, because the film is actually quite clever. I wouldn't say it's as good as the teenage girl werewolf movie Ginger Snaps, but it's along the same lines; the two would make for a perfect double feature.
Seyfried and Fox carry the movie, but they get some good support from Johnny Simmons as Needy's boyfriend Chip, who gets caught in the middle of the battle between the two friends; Kyle Gallner as one of Jennifer's victims; the aforementioned Adam Brody as Nikolai; and J.K. Simmons as a teacher. Amy Sedaris makes a cameo as Needy's mom, and a pre-fame Chris Pratt has a very small role as someone Jennifer knows better than she should.
2009 was a rough year for me, and Jennifer's Body was the right movie at the right time. It was a bright spot in that year, as it allowed me to have some fun during a dark period. I'll always appreciate it for the entertainment it provided then, and I still find it to be entertaining when I revisit it now.
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