Review of Jennifer’s Body, directed by Karyn Kusama

If you’re new here, and stumbled upon this blog through the mythical powers of the Internet, welcome! I know a lot of visitors to my website are people who randomly come upon this website through search engines like Google, but I also do have a lot of visitors who come back. Regardless: my name is Ashley, and I started this blog in order to keep track of everything I’m coming across in the world.

I feel like a lot of my blog introductions, especially when it comes to movies, have been lamenting on the fact I don’t have a ton of time lately. I used to work as a film critic (which, in fact, was so incredibly underpaid that I now make more off of this blog’s display ads than I ever did publishing anywhere else), and then when I was in graduate school I was writing a lot about film, so I used to watch so many movies.

But now I work an 8-5, come home, and then doom scroll my evenings away instead of watching the movies I used to love so dearly. And recently I realized I want to stop doing that, so I’ve set limits on my phone and am fully prepared to sit back and watch more movies and read more books in order to feed my brain.

And sometimes those movies don’t have to be high art or super intellectual. I think when I worked as a critic I often saw a lot of movies I needed to analyze deeply, but nowadays I just go for whatever interests me in the moment. That’s how one day I ended up opening Netflix, seeing Jennifer’s Body was added, realized I’ve never seen it, and pressed play.

Let’s get into the review—I don’t want to ramble too much in the introduction!

After becoming possessed by a demon, Jennifer’s best friend has to find a way to save Jennifer.

This movie opens up in the present day, where Needy (who full name is Anita, but “Needy” definitely is some commentary there in some ways), is trapped inside of an asylum and stuck in solitary confiement most of the time because of her outbursts and violent tendencies.

Then we go back to what happened to bring her there. In high school, she was best friends with her childhood buddy Jennifer, even though Jennifer is popular and a social butterfly. Needy is not that, and Jennifer knows this, leading her to dominate and really treat Needy like a doormat on a daily basis.

Jennifer wants to go to a local dive bar one night, as the band Low Shoulder is performing there. As they start singing and the vibes go up, a fire stars inside the bar, killing people due to the tight corridors. Jennifer and Needy escape, but when they’re outside, the members of Low Shoulder take Jennifer away into their car, much to Needy’s protesting.

Needy goes home and that night, while in her kitchen, Jennifer appears while covered in blood. She attempts to eat an entire chicken out of the fridge, then vomits up some black liquid before heading up to Needy and almost biting her neck. In shock, Needy watches as she leaves the house, but the next day Jennifer dismisses it when Needy brings up what happened.

Jennifer also doesn’t seem to care about the fire and makes fun of it in some ways. That same day she approaches the football captain, who’s grieving the death of his friend, and lures him into the woods. He thinks he’s about to get laid, but she eats him instead. As all of this is going on, Low Shoulder is gaining fame for being heroes during the fire (they were not) and the school invites them to their formal.

Some time passes. Jennifer starts feeling off and appearing like she’s got something. She befriends the local emo boy, Colin, and tells him to meet her at an abandoned house. He shows up, excited for something to happen, but then she kills him brutally and eats him like she did for the captain. As that’s happening, Needy is having sex with her boyfriend and starts having visions of Jennifer as a demon.

She flees and leaves her boyfriend behind, but finds Jennifer sitting on her bed and covered in blood. They start kissing, as Jennifer approaches Needy, but then Needy backs off and starts questioning her. That’s when it’s confession time: the night of the fire, Low Shoulder took her into the woods and sacrificed her to Satan. However, they needed a virgin and she wasn’t.

That means she is permanently possessed and Low Shoulder was able to get the fame they now have. On the way home, Jennifer ran into the exchange student at the school and ate him (everyone thought he died in the fire), then went to devour Needy. However, she couldn’t bring herself to do it, so she ran away.

After that Needy begins researching the occult at the school, then realizes Jennifer became a succubus. She goes to tell her boyfriend, but he doesn’t believe her and they break up. However, on the way to the school dance, Jennifer goes after him and convinces him that Needy has been cheating, luring him to an abandoned pool to feast.

Just as she starts biting into him, Needy shows up, having noticed he was missing, and they managed to impale Jennifer. It’s not enough though, as she ate enough of Chip to survive, and she flees while Chip passes away due to his injuries.

Needy heads to Jennifer’s room and attacks her. While Jennifer gets a bite to the shoulder in, Jennifer stops fighting after Needy goes for the best friend necklace and rips it off, allowing her to stab Jennifer in the heart. It’s just then Jennifer’s mother walks in though, leading to Needy’s arrest and incarceration.

It’s at the asylum she realizes she manifested some of the powers after being bit, which she uses to escape. She hitchhikes her way to Low Shoulder’s latest hotel, then kills all of them brutally.

Overall Thoughts

After seeing this, I understand why it became a cult classic. It’s brutal in some of the best ways possible for a movie, and all of the actors do an excellent job with the material. The weakest link is Megan Fox, but she does fine for a movie of this scale.

That said, I honestly don’t have a ton to say about this movie beyond the fact I enjoyed it. It’s not a groundbreaking movie, but it’s a lot of fun and something that I think if worth picking up at least once if you’ve never seen it before.

Go watch it if you haven’t had the chance!

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