Jennifer's Body (2009)

This week I watched Jennifer's Body. According to IMDb.com the movie plot is; A newly possessed cheerleader turns into a killer who specializes in offing her male classmates. Can her best friend put an end to the horror?

It stars Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried. It was written by Diablo Cody, who also wrote Juno. When the movie came out it got a lot of mixed reviews, most of them bad. Probably because critics and viewers were expecting Juno with a horror twist.Maybe baby drama were the baby turns out to be a demonic entity instead?

However, I found the movie to be satisfying, not the best horror I've seen but neither the worst. How much I enjoyed it really surprised me since normally I can't really stand Megan Fox, her "acting" in Transformers and her comments in real life makes me cringe each and every time, but in this movie I didn't mind her at all. This might have to do with the fact that Fox's portrayal of Jennifer seems to be Fox playing herself but with wittier lines, courtesy of Cody.

However, I think it was Amanda Seyfried's portrayal of Needy that really pulled together the movie. Seyfried's Needy is never weak, stupid or a stereotypical horror blond bombshell, instead Diablo Cody and Seyfried give us a character that is very much an average teenage girl that is put in a very extreme situation by her "sand box" best friend Jennifer. They also lets us know not only how these experiences changed her but also how much. Seyfried's transformation from sidekick to slayer doesn't seem to far fetched.

Both Jennifer and Needy divergent journeys and turbulent friendship can be seen as a very plausible metaphor for the trials and tribulations teenage girls go thorough every day, both individually and together. The plot of the movie can be seen as a extreme example of what can happen when two people, who have been best friends since forever, grow apart. In real life, this would probably end with talking behind each others backs, fights and facebook de-friending, but in Cody's world we get demon possession and murder.

Another aspect of the movie is that it can be seen as an extreme example of what can happen after a female, in this instance Jennifer, is sexually brutalized and victimized, as Jennifer was by the band.

It also has not so subtle overtones as being a metaphor for both female sexual liberation, such as Needy losing her virginity and Jennifer luring the boys (a.k.a. her food) by using sex as power.

All in all, it was a good movie.