Body of Work

Jennifer's Body (2009) is a movie I've known about for a while, but never got around to seeing. Now it seems to be going through a critical re-appraisal, so I queued it up.

It stars Amanda Seyfried as "Needy", a bookish high-school student, and her BFF Jennifer (Megan Fox), the hottest cheerleader in the school. They have been friends since the sandbox and even though they don't seem to have much in common, they stick together. In fact, Fox keeps pulling Seyfried away from her boyfriend Johnny Simmons. Simmons is one of those great lowkey boyfriends, like Gabriel Mann as Alan M. from Josie and the Pussycats. One night, she drags Seyfried to a dive bar to see an indie band featuring Adam Brody, hoping to jump his bones. A fire of suspicious origin starts and Brody stuffs Fox into a van and they take off.

She shows up in Seyfried’s house, drenched in blood and vomiting black goo, then runs off. The next day at school, Seyfried is numb with grief but Fox is her usual bitchy self. While the school is grieving, she just wants to move on. But she seems to be losing her looks and vitality. About a month after the fire, she goes on a date with one of the school’s goth boys, and kills him.

Seyfried, meanwhile, has been having awkward, amateur sex with Simmons, but her psychic connection to Fox makes her run out, get in the car, and hit Fox - who survives no problem. Fox gives her the lowdown: Brody and the band sacrificed her as a virgin offering to Satan - that’s the only way an indie band can get ahead. But since she wasn’t a virgin in fact (“not even a backdoor virgin”), she is reborn with powers and a thirst for blood.

I won’t tell you how it all ends up - but the movie starts with Seyfried a violent patient in a psych ward.

We loved director Karyn Kusama’s first feature, Girlfight, also our first exposure to Michelle Rodriguez. I also really liked Aeon Flux, although I may be alone in this. I haven’t seen a lot of scriptwriter Diablo Cody’s stuff, but I like what she did here. Very naturalistic friendship and highschool scenes, with witty and sometimes surprising dialog. I can see why this movie is trending.