By Ellie Gurini

Content Warning: Please note this article contains discussion of sexual assault.

Jennifer’s Body (Karyn Kusama, USA, 2009) is as much a product of its time as the teased side fringe or slightly offensive stick and poke tattoos of your peers from secondary school. It’s as close to a classic horror film as a certified flop can be, and has become treasured by ‘emos’ and lesbians. Dare I say, it’s the musically deficient scene queen cousin of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Funnily enough, the film pays homage to RHPS, as Jennifer remarks that she doesn’t like “boxing films.” This sort of quick wit is (probably not) what earned it an impressive 46% tomatometer and 35% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.

But, for all its quips and laughable gore, like most films it has a point. It may be worth considering ‘Jennifer’s Body,’ the 1992 song by Hole. Ironically enough, it doesn’t actually feature on the album's soundtrack, but their song ‘Violet’ does. ‘Jennifer’s Body’ tells the story of a girl who is murdered, whilst also referencing a toxic relationship. ‘Violet’ is possibly more important in this context, especially with its use of the line ‘You should learn when to go, you should learn how to say no.’ This is widely regarded to be referencing sexual assault. Whilst there is no explicit sexual assault in the film, it seems to be an allegory for it.

We see Jennifer become traumatised when a night out goes wrong: she ends up leaving with an indie band who sacrifice her to the devil. When this scene is shown in the film, it is one of the only serious scenes where Jennifer is clearly frightened. She begs for her life, which the group responds to by making up songs and laughing raucously as they stab her repeatedly. This dichotomy between a distressed woman and a group of men surrounding her, amused, already sets a clear tone, even without considering the stabbing as an act of penetration. From then on, she acts strangely. Explicitly, this is due to her possession. However, this is also reminiscent of someone who has experienced something that she doesn’t know how to handle. Her initial reaction is to run to her best friend, Needy, and act erratically, eating her food and threatening the other girl before throwing up. Later on, we see her murdering boys as a result of the possession, to keep herself fed. However, she exclusively targets men who are attracted to her, seeing them as either easy prey or below her. We see this in an exchange with Needy, who accused her of killing ‘people,’ to which Jennifer replies ‘No, I’m killing boys.’ This is reminiscent of rape revenge films such as I Spit on Your Grave.

Another focal point of the film is Jennifer and Needy’s relationship, with Needy acting as the protagonist to Jennifer’s antagonist. This is the most fleshed out relationship in the film, with Jennifer’s relationships with men being purely nutrition-based. Needy and Jennifer have been best friends since they were children, despite Jennifer often mistreating Needy. That being said, while Jennifer is a victim in this story, she is also the archetypal mean girl; Needy isn’t the only person to get cut down by her. However, Needy is loyal to Jennifer and spends the whole film attempting to help her, only turning on her once Jennifer targets her boyfriend and she knows that she won't be able to stop her killing spree.

However, Needy’s feelings towards Jennifer are perhaps less complex than Jennifer’s feelings towards Needy. We see her acting possessively from the start of the film, where she clashes with Needy’s boyfriend and ‘steals’ Needy away to a gig. Similarly, we see her target boys who are established friends of Needy’s. She constantly turns to Needy, such as when she is first sacrificed, and when she confesses what happened. She also kisses Needy after confessing about the sacrifice. Needy seems to be the only source of love for her, as we never see any kind of family or other positive relationships in Jennifer’s life. While targeting boys Needy liked is likely either some form of possessive behaviour or competition, it could also go back to Jennifer targeting men who liked her. She had a bad experience with the band members, and she is protecting her friend from the same dangers. Needy turns this on its head at the films end, where she kills the men who sacrificed Jennifer, which is similar to a trope within rape revenge films of (normally male) people close to the victim hunting down the perpetrators.

Part of what caused the bad reception of this film is likely that they targeted advertising to men, whereas the film itself is beloved by mainly women, with Sophia Birks explaining that it’s “A film made by women, for women was marketed to a frat boy audience, playing up the sexulization of Fox and leaving out its narrative examinations of feminist and queer ideologies”. The trailer starts with Jennifer (Megan Fox) skinny dipping in a lake, and later involves her unzipping her jacket to reveal her torso. This isn’t entirely misrepresenting the film, as Jennifer’s character fits all the archetypes of a femme fatale, but it does undermine it. Thus, her objectification in the media campaign, and Megan Fox’s as an actress, is somewhat criticised within the film. Jennifer’s story is that of a woman who is used for her body, and then changed beyond belief and dies as a result. Whilst the tagline ‘Hell is a teenage girl’ fits Jennifer well, she is not the true villain of this story: that role belongs to the band members who sacrifice her in return for fame and glory. It’s also worth noting that this film was beloved by 2000s ‘emos’, who had plenty of experience with indie bands getting exposed for inappropriate relations with fans, so it likely struck a cord there.

Overall, Jennifer’s Body is a masterpiece of a film with a horrific marketing campaign. When I say masterpiece, I don’t necessarily mean it’s well made (the special effects as Jennifer eats someone is something to be witnessed). The reason Jennifer’s Body is so beloved nowadays is the way it captured a glimpse of society. I didn’t watch this film until I was probably 19, but the inclusion of bands such as Panic! At The Disco in the soundtrack, the unrepentant bitchiness of the characters, and the relationship between Jennifer and Needy practically drags me back to being a teenager in 2015 (it was made in 2009, but 7 year old me hadn’t discovered My Chemical Romance at that time). The film criticises the commodification of Jennifer, yet the marketing hinges on it. This strange juxtaposition is part of why it had such a bad reception; the people who would enjoy this film weren’t necessarily persuaded to watch it. If you haven’t seen it, it’s worth the 142 minutes, especially if you have a friend to laugh at the special effects with!

Works referenced

'Birks, Sophia, "The Evolution of Revenge: Genre, Feminist Theory and Jennifer’s Body" (2020). Capstone Showcase. 7.

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