There are few films more of their time than Jennifer’s Body. The success of the movie can be measured almost exclusively in its re-appraisal after it crashed and burned at the box office while being panned by critics when it was released 15 years ago on September 18, 2009. Reviews called Jennifer’s Body “self-conscious” and “shallow,” an anthem for a generation that hadn’t yet come into its own. “The chances that it will be somebody else’s pop culture reference 27 years from now are slim to none,” declared one blunt critic. We’re not at the 27-year mark yet, but Jennifer’s Body has already made the jump from empty B-movie to post-feminist cult favorite.
Written by a post-Juno Diablo Cody and directed by Karyn Kusama, the film follows Jennifer Check (Megan Fox), the consummate popular girl of a small town called Devil’s Kettle who becomes possessed by a demon after a virgin sacrifice gone wrong — much to the chagrin of her codependent best friend Needy (Amanda Seyfried). Jennifer’s dynamic with Needy is complex, messy, and pockmarked with a plethora of zingers that haven’t aged well, but beneath Cody’s crude prose lies a darker story about the horrors of female adolescence. It goes far beyond the film’s endlessly-quoted thesis, “Hell is a teenage girl,” to pick at something deeper, asking why girls like Jennifer turn into monsters and how they share that fate with girls like Needy.
