Jennifer’s Body is a film that doesn’t deserve half the spurning it got from the critics. It was one of those bodies that was just released at the wrong time – and that time was the height of Megan Fox’s starlet status. If memory serves, this might have been around the same time she likened Michael Bay to Hitler. It was not unreasonable to dislike her. The worst thing Fox can do for her career is say anything that isn’t written down for her.
Jennifer’s Body, however, was not a horrible career choice. The movie had some clever, if appropriately juvenile, dialog and interesting ideas. The most interesting idea is that everything that happens in the story would normally be considered the B-story in the plot. The A-story is that a band sacrificed a girl to Satan for easy fame and fortune. The B-story is that the girl wasn’t a virgin, meaning her body was possessed by a demon and she went on a flesh-eating rampage until her best friend put her down. We get glimpses at the A-story as the movie progresses. The band becomes more and more famous overnight, and only Amanda Seyfried’s character knows why.
There are definite shortcomings with the film. The final event of the film is Seyfried’s character’s revenge on the band, which only happens because surviving a demon’s bite provides some of the demon’s power. This fact is not foreshadowed or built in any way, just sprung on the audience right before it is necessary to know. Surprises are good, but this struck me as more of an ass-pull to leave the audience with some form of a happy ending. Otherwise the end of the movie would have been Seyfried locked up in a mental institution. I guess it was too clever to end the movie with the protagonist’s being locked up for averting a horrible crisis of which no one else was aware.
I say give this movie five years and bring it back as a cult classic. I bet it ages well, and it will stand up well without the burden of Megan Fox’s current media relevance.
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