The A.V. Club described it as “clever for its own sake, a showy piece of writing that doesn’t have that all-important ballast of sincerity.” Fox said that while filming her highly anticipated kissing scene with Seyfried that Seyfried was "extremely uncomfortable" but that she herself was not. "I feel much safer with girls, so I felt more comfortable kissing [Seyfried] than kissing any of the other people that I had to kiss", she said. [34] Seyfried's uneasiness in the scene caused "giggling fits" between takes. [34] Seyfried said that neither of them wanted to do the kiss because they felt it was just for promotional purposes. [18] She agreed with Fox that she was uneasy about acting out the scene. "It was my first time doing a real kissing scene with a woman", she stated. "It is just weird. It is a woman. With a woman's smell—soft and floraly—and maybe the pheromones are different. Something about it felt uncomfortable for me." [35] Music [ edit ] Hollywood.com box-office analyst and President Paul Dergarabedian said "the poor numbers don't mean Fox can't open a movie." [63] "It may be a matter of just choosing the right projects for her", he told Associated Press . "She's trying to find a world beyond Transformers, and she will. She's young and has a lot of promise." [63] Home media [ edit ] As the movie came out, Cody and Kusama both spoke in interviews to the tension between the idea of the movie as a campy horror sex romp and its reality as a much weirder film — and Kusama, especially, didn’t seem thrilled with the way the studio’s marketing campaign was going. There's the scene where Jennifer's sitting alone smearing makeup on her face. I always thought that was such a sad image. She's so vulnerable. I don't know any woman who hasn't had a moment sitting in front of the mirror and thinking, 'Help me, I want to be somebody else.' What makes it extra affecting is that [Megan Fox] is stunning. [3]

And that revenge fantasy is grounded in the emotional truth of the toxic, codependent, profoundly meaningful friendship between Needy and Jennifer. “Sandbox love never dies,” says Needy at the beginning of the movie. And throughout the rest of the film, even as Needy and Jennifer turn ever more firmly against each other, even as they work to hurt each other as badly as they can, it’s always clear that theirs is the most important relationship in each woman’s life.Nearly 10 years after the feminist horror comedy Jennifer’s Body premiered, flopped, and was declared dead on arrival, it’s beginning to live again. It may have gotten a 44 percent on Rotten Tomatoes when it came out — and, even worse, a 34 percent audience rating — but the narrative is shifting: The internet is suddenly full of critics reclaiming the movie and naming it a forgotten feminist classic. Jennifer’s Body is good now. Spears stated that while writing the stories, the film was still being made and he had not seen any of it at the time. He mainly learned about the characters through the script. "I got to read the screenplay. It was kinda crazy writing characters that were being changed on set and in the editing process. I had to bob and weave to keep up but that was all part of the fun", he said. [72] See also [ edit ]

The next day, Jennifer seems like her usual selfish, callous self. But soon high school boys start showing up ripped to shreds and partially devoured. Jennifer has become a succubus who must consume human flesh to feed the demon within, thanks to a Satanic ritual gone wrong. (Low Shoulder needed to sacrifice a virgin in exchange for fame and fortune, and, well, Jennifer hasn't been a virgin since junior high.) Needy must face the fact that her best friend is a monster, and it's up to her to take Jennifer down before she chows down on more boys—like Needy's own boyfriend, Chip (Johnny Simmons). So much subtext The next morning at school, Jennifer appears fine and dismisses Needy's concerns, appearing apathetic to the fire tragedy. She seduces the school's football captain and disembowels him. Meanwhile, Low Shoulder gains popularity due to their falsely rumored heroism during the fire, and offer to make a charity appearance at the school's spring formal. On creating the story, Spears stated, "The best part for me as a writer was to show some events from the movie from a different point of view, sort of like Rashomon for you Kurosawa fans. And with comics we can get into the character's [ sic] heads in a way that works well in comics and novels more so than in film." [72] He stated, "... I was using the medium to change what we really know about these characters and twist around what we see in the movies. All the academics aside, it's also very funny and gore splattered." [72] But when you try to view Jennifer’s Body as a spooky sex romp for men, it disappoints. None of the men in this movie have enough of a presence for audience members to project themselves onto, the way audiences could with Kristen Stewart’s Bella in Twilight. Neumaier, Joe (September 18, 2009). " 'Jennifer's Body': Megan Fox zombie horror satire needs more fleshing out". New York Daily News. Archived from the original on September 22, 2009 . Retrieved September 20, 2009.a b Rodriguez, Rene (September 18, 2009). "Jennifer's Body (R) **½: Flirting with greatness, bedeviled by timidity". The Miami Herald . Retrieved September 19, 2009. [ dead link] But the framing Kusama and Cody tried to offer the movie — as something that sought to be fun but was also harder and more complex than that — was by and large pushed aside. Many critics watched Jennifer’s Body explicitly as a horror sex romp for straight men, and they found themselves profoundly confused. a b "Jennifer Aniston, Megan Fox Bomb at the Box Office". Us Weekly. September 21, 2009. Archived from the original on September 24, 2009 . Retrieved September 21, 2009. Jones, Brent (September 2, 2009). " 'Jennifer's Body' creeps into theaters ... and comics". USA Today. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016 . Retrieved September 27, 2009. Machado, Carmen Maria (2022). "Both Ways". In Vallese, Joe (ed.). It Came From the Closet. New York City: The Feminist Press. pp.21–28. ISBN 9781952177798. OCLC 1325677846.

In late 2007, Fox Atomic had plans to film Jennifer's Body before a possible writer's strike. When the Writers Guild of America strike began, shooting was then moved to March 7, 2008, in Burnaby, British Columbia, specifically at Robert Burnaby Park near Cariboo Hill Secondary School. Some of the scenes, particularly those situated in a school setting, were filmed in local Vancouver-area schools such as Vancouver Technical Secondary School, Langley Secondary School and University Hill Secondary School. The waterfalls scene was filmed at Cascade Falls in Cascade Falls Regional Park in British Columbia.The film has seen a resurgence in recent years, but it's the popularity it garnered inside the LGBTQ+ community that propelled its cult status. People who have found this film more than 10 years after its release have discovered a new story in it, freed from the rhetoric of its marketing campaign and the reading that critics gave it. A whole new generation of queer women can now see themselves in the characters of Needy and Jennifer in a way that few other films allowed in 2009 – or still allow even today. Burr, Ty (September 18, 2009). "Jennifer' Body Fox can't heat up 'Body' ". Boston.com. The Boston Globe. Archived from the original on September 24, 2009 . Retrieved September 25, 2009. Needy is also an atypical Final Girl. Scream reminded us all about the importance of virginity if a young woman is to survive a slasher film, but Needy and Chip have a normal, healthy sexual relationship, so that ship has long since sailed. Unfortunately, what the film was doing is still unusual in today's cinema landscape. As Grady said in Vox: "Jennifer's Body is good now. More precisely, Jennifer's Body was always good, and everyone is just now starting to get on its level."

Viewing the film nearly a decade after its release feels like experiencing the beginning of something that hadn’t quite taken form yet,” said Refinery29 in August. “Thematically, it hits on so many of the issues women in Hollywood are talking about in the aftermath of #MeToo and Times Up that I find it hard to believe it would have been as critically panned today.” Typically, when we think of cult classic films and TV series that get a second lease on life via VHS, DVD, or streaming, we think of a nerd's club of mostly boys: Blade Runner, Office Space, Freaks and Geeks, and so on. There are obviously exceptions, and this weekend marks one of the the best ones in the horror space: the 10th anniversary of the criminally misunderstood Jennifer's Body.a b "Jennifer's Body (2009)". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango Media. March 8, 2018. Archived from the original on April 28, 2020 . Retrieved April 20, 2020. How Jennifer's Body went from a flop in 2009 to a feminist cult classic today". www.vox.com. October 31, 2018. Archived from the original on January 15, 2023 . Retrieved January 11, 2023.