Jennifer's Body Was Ahead of Its Time: Revisiting the Feminist Horror Critics Missed in 2009

Jennifer's Body is a great horror film, and I want to give it its new flowers. Released in 2009 to more flak than appreciation, it was a feminist horror movie that, in my opinion, challenged the societal norms of its time and was simply ahead of it.

I want to look at the legacy of Jennifer's Body and the vision behind it, examine its unusual genre, break down some of its most iconic scenes and go through the trials and tribulations it faced behind the scenes.

Jennifer's Body follows a botched ritual that turns Jennifer into a succubus

Jennifer's Body was released in 2009 by 20th Century Fox. It was directed by Karyn Kusama, whose credits include Yellowjackets, The Invitation and Aeon Flux, and written by Academy Award winning writer Diablo Cody. Megan Fox stars as Jennifer Check, Amanda Seyfried plays Needy Lesnicki, and Johnny Simmons, Young Neil himself, plays Chip. Chip isn't really important to this discussion, but I'm a child of the 2000s, and who am I to leave out Young Neil?

The film follows Jennifer and Needy, friends since childhood. Jennifer encourages Needy to come to a concert in their small town because she loves the band playing. During the show a fire breaks out, the building collapses, and many people from their town die. In the chaos Jennifer is separated from Needy and saved by the band, only to become the subject of a botched ritual. Instead of dying, she returns as a succubus who preys on the boys in town, and Needy is the only one who can stop her.

Diablo Cody wanted to write about female hunger and teenage friendship

That twisted blend of high school drama, female friendship and supernatural horror wasn't random. Once Juno collected all its accolades, Cody was given free rein to do just about anything. She had always wanted to make a horror movie, one of her favourite genres, so she created a story about female adolescence, female hunger and female teenage friendship.

In my opinion, writing women has always been something Cody is really proficient at. In Juno she wrote a precious, witty, smart girl with a funny, ironic detachment to most things, and her women are distinct and authentic even with their exaggerations. After Jennifer's Body, she was helping other writers bump up their female characters, including writing Jane Levy's character for Fede Álvarez's 2013 Evil Dead.

Here, she wrote a story about a girl who needs boys and male attention to feed because, in her words, it was an interesting metaphor. She wrote it on spec, then met with a number of directors, but clicked instantly with Kusama, who wanted to build something on a larger scale about how alliances between girls get distorted and corrupted by the patriarchy.

Critics dismissed Jennifer's Body for the wrong reasons

That sounds like a fantastic movie today, but the film barely scraped by with a 44 percent Rotten Tomatoes score. I think it's an outstanding movie whose themes went over many people's and critics' heads, leaving a lot of people disappointed for the wrong reasons. IGN called it another mediocre horror movie about teenagers. Claudia Puig at USA Today said it tries hard to be cool, gross and nasty but feels forced and misses the mark. A review in the Guardian asked whether it sucks blood or just plain sucks.

Most of the other reviews were, to me, unnecessarily mean, usually either hating on Fox or Cody or comparing it to Juno. Comparing a movie about a succubus murdering people to Juno felt like comparing apples to oranges. You can do it, but they're very different. Even Roger Ebert called it a Twilight for boys, adding, "As a movie about a flesh-eating cheerleader, it's better than it has to be." That's a great description, but not really what the movie is about.

Jennifer's Body blends teen slasher, satire and feminist horror

The film subverted the typical male gaze of teen horror by centring female friendship, sexuality and female rage. It critiques how women's bodies are exploited while giving women agency in ways horror rarely allowed teen girls at the time. It felt like a deep satirical take on real world feminist and patriarchal issues. Social commentary in horror wasn't radical back then, but horror centred on teen girls was rarely taken seriously.

Horror keeps evolving to mash up subgenres, which works in movies like Get Out, The Babadook and even Tucker and Dale, which blends slasher and intense comedy so well. But different subgenres generate different suspense and scares. From the jump we thought Jennifer's Body was a teen slasher. We didn't know it was also feminist and satirical horror and, in my opinion, a bit of a twisted coming of age story. The odds of it shooting over the moon were never really in its favour.

Feminist horror can't be forced into one box

Feminist horror, my favourite kind, explores themes and anxieties related to the female experience. What's shocking or terrifying to women can be universal, but it can also differ or evolve over time. Cam can be viewed as a contemporary piece of feminist horror about digital anxieties, while A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night delves into patriarchal violence and the street level dangers women face. There's no one box this genre fits in, which is why I love its diversity. Jennifer's Body has numerous scenes that, in my opinion, capture authentic feminist horror without being cryptic.

The Low Shoulder sacrifice is the heart of the film's critique

The sacrifice scene is difficult to rewatch. Seeing a young girl restrained and killed while men laugh highlights the film's central theme, the exploitation of young women under the patriarchy, and symbolises dehumanisation and exploited trauma. Megan Fox has said the scene was impactful to her and she wanted to do it because she viewed the band Low Shoulder as a representation of the big film studios dominated by men. She felt those studios exploited her relentlessly, disregarding her concerns and treating her body as an object for their professional gain.

Others can read the scene through horror's frequent rape revenge storylines. It isn't a sexual assault scene, but it carries the same haunting undertones. Jennifer begs for her life and her words fall on deaf ears. In a last attempt she says she's a virgin, society's supposed marker of worth for young women, only to find it meaningless. Virgin or not, innocent or flawed, women are still too often reduced to conquests, objects and tools within a patriarchal system.

There's also commentary here that I don't think is intentional but does mirror Cody's past. Her history as a dancer is well known, and the tabloids, the press and critics used that stigma to undermine her work. That kind of shaming was outrageous then and is outrageous now. The virgin sacrifice reflects a patriarchal obsession that equates virginity with purity, devaluing anyone who doesn't fit the mould.

So the sacrifice operates on multiple levels. The ritual is the patriarchy, Low Shoulder represents man, Jen represents woman, and succubus Jen is the outcome of that violence. She's an allegory of a modern Frankenstein, raising Shelley's question of who is the man and who is the monster. Patriarchy doesn't truly serve anyone, and as in Frankenstein, creator and creation are both ruined. I also love that the film returns to sacrifice with Needy at the end: instead of sacrifice for fame and fortune, it's sacrifice for love. Succubus Jen still sees her body as an object, but Needy corrects her, saying it was her heart. Low Shoulder saw a tool; Needy saw a person. And yes, Needy was in love with Jen. They were in love with each other, no confusion there.

Jennifer walking alone at night is a dark kind of liberation

One thing I find fascinating, and loved in A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night too, is how Jen walks confidently at night after becoming a succubus. That can be read as commentary on the vulnerability that often keeps women from walking alone at night. Her transformation makes her the ultimate predator, reclaiming that space.

I recognise it can sound like I'm suggesting the patriarchy liberated her, and it's more nuanced than that; I think this is behind a lot of the critiques of the movie. The exploitation meant to destroy Jen transforms her into a tool for destroying them. It's a dark, imperfect liberation that came with a cost. I'm not claiming to have answers on finding freedom within confinement as a woman, especially in America, and "I'm a black woman in America. There are just so many layers to this." But it resonated with me, even if it doesn't with everybody, and I understand the critiques.

Jennifer's wardrobe gets girlier as she gets creepier

One scene shouldn't be so iconic. After Jonas's murder, Jen struts down a blue, sombre hallway full of distraught teenagers in a pink heart jacket from Gap Kids, blue skinny jeans and ribbon heels tied over her jeans, a look that embodies her new unsettling confidence. As the costume designer has noted, Jennifer gets girlier in her wardrobe as she gets worse and creepier, with those bows over the jeans being wrong for all the right reasons.

To me the shift connects to trauma, survival and reclaiming agency. I'm not suggesting this was intentional, or that all survivors would respond this way, since trauma affects everyone differently. But Jennifer returning as a revenge fuelled phoenix can be read as using the image men imposed on her to turn the tables.

Colin's death and Needy's night with Chip mirror each other

Colin's death is intercut with Needy losing her virginity to Chip, and the scene cements the love between Needy and Jennifer that always felt deeper than friendship. That portrayal of queer love is what I longed for after this movie and never got. Needy and Chip's innocent yet provocative preparation mirrors the intimate nature of Jen and Colin's ritual; both are luring their partners.

It reminds me of Medusa, whom Freud read as male anxiety around female sexuality: beautiful, tempting and terrifying, which is exactly Jennifer here. Her sexuality becomes something the boys can't control, while Needy's own curiosity mirrors Jennifer's power more softly. The film is basically saying women's sexuality is fascinating, alluring and powerful, and can scare people who only want to control it.

Why Jennifer's Body flopped, and why it would thrive now

Jennifer's Body is much more than its failed tagline, "She's evil and not just high school evil." It was racy but calculated, rooted in feminist ideas. We recognise its significance now because of the considerable changes since 2009 in Hollywood's view of women, sexuality and sexual identity in the post #MeToo era, which is still going on.

In my opinion, there are three main reasons it flopped: "People didn't get it. They didn't want to get it. And they weren't ready for it." Some other criticisms hold weight, but on top of widespread misunderstanding, Megan Fox faced intense backlash and the studio's marketing badly failed it. The film confronted misogyny and the male gaze, but it was sold as another hot Megan Fox movie. Test audiences were mostly male and unimpressed, and young women never heard about it.

Cody and Kusama knew they were making a movie for girls about how female alliances get corrupted by the patriarchy, and that vision was lost on the studio. Cody later recounted a call in which the studio head basically told her the film was for teenage boys who think Megan Fox is hot, and that she hadn't pandered to them. Today it would thrive: feminist, campy and clever. The conversation around Megan Fox has changed too, and the film is finally getting the appreciation it deserves.

I love Jennifer's Body. I cherished it as a young girl; I was that demographic. It's campy, violent and funny, and it left a mark on me. Ever since, I've gravitated to horror that is written or directed by women and that puts women at the heart of it all.

Was Jennifer's Body simply ahead of its time, or do some of the original criticisms still hold weight for you?