Tagline: She’s evil… and not just high school evil.
Anita “Needy” Lesnicki (Amanda Seyfried), once an insecure and bookish teenager in a Twin Cities area suburb, is now a violent mental inmate who narrates the story as a flashback while in solitary confinement. She has been friends with a selfish and popular cheerleader, Jennifer Check (Megan Fox), since childhood, despite having little in common.
One night, Jennifer takes Needy to a local dive bar to attend a concert by indie rock band Low Shoulder. A suspicious fire engulfs the bar, killing several, and Jennifer who is in shock, agrees to leave with the band despite Needy’s attempts to stop her. Later that evening, Jennifer, covered in blood, appears in Needy’s kitchen and proceeds to eat food from the refrigerator. Unable to digest the matter, she vomits a trail of black, spiny fluid and then leaves in a hurry as Needy calls after her.
The next morning at school, Jennifer appears fine and shrugs off Needy’s concerns. While the whole town is devastated by the deaths caused by the fire, Jennifer seduces the school’s football captain in the woods and then kills him; his disemboweled corpse is later found. Meanwhile, the members of Low Shoulder gain popularity due to their rumored heroism during the fire and offer to make a charity appearance at the school’s spring formal.
A month later, Jennifer is beginning to look pale, and accepts a date with school goth/emo Colin (Kyle Gallner), whom she brutally kills that night. While Needy and her boyfriend, Chip (Johnny Simmons) have sex, Needy senses something dreadful has happened. She leaves in a panic and almost runs over Jennifer, drenched in blood. She rushes home and finds Jennifer in her bedroom. Jennifer kisses her, initiating a brief makeout session, and soon explains what happened after the fire: Low Shoulder took her into the woods and offered her as a virgin sacrifice to Satan in exchange for fame and fortune.
Although the sacrifice and greedy exchange were a success, Jennifer was in fact not a virgin, and when the lead singer Nikolai (Adam Brody) murdered her, the ritual backfired and a demonic spirit took over her body. Unbeknownst to Needy, Jennifer also encountered the Indian exchange student Ahmet after the fire and, upon hearing that no one knew he had survived, took him into the woods and ate him, rendering him her first victim. Jennifer states that she can withstand virtually any injury without pain and is rather difficult to kill.
The next day at school, as the town is stunned by Colin’s death, Needy goes to the school library’s occult section and surmises that Jennifer is a succubus; she is weakest when she is hungry, and must feed on flesh in order to sustain her life and appearance. Needy tells Chip about her discoveries and warns him not to attend the school dance. He does not believe her and she subsequently breaks up with him in order to protect him.
Chip goes to the dance, hoping to meet with Needy, but is instead intercepted by Jennifer, who seduces him and takes him to an abandoned pool house. Needy arrives there and finds Jennifer feeding on Chip. Needy tries to drown Jennifer but Jennifer, hovering in the air, attacks her. She is then stabbed by Chip with a pool skimmer. Jennifer escapes while Needy watches her boyfriend die.
Needy decides she must kill Jennifer for the common good. She goes to Jennifer’s home and sees Jennifer picking out her next victims in her yearbook. Crashing through the window, Needy engages in a fight with Jennifer wielding a box cutter. Culminating with a stab to the heart, Needy finally destroys the demon and kills her. Jennifer’s mother enters and finds Needy with the box cutter on top of her daughter’s body.
Soon after, Needy is brought to an asylum. Since she was bitten non-fatally by Jennifer, she has obtained some of Jennifer’s supernatural powers, such as the ability to hover in the air. Set upon revenge for what was done to Jennifer and her, she escapes the mental facility and hitchhikes a ride to the hotel where Low Shoulder are staying; there, she slaughters the members, whose killings are later discovered by local authorities.
Jennifer’s Body is a 2009 supernatural horror black comedy film written by Diablo Cody and directed by Karyn Kusama. The film stars Megan Fox, Amanda Seyfried, Johnny Simmons, and Adam Brody. Fox portrays a demonically possessed high school girl who kills her male classmates, with her best friend striving to stop her. The film premiered at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival[3] and was released in the United States and Canada on September 18, 2009.[4] The title is a reference to the song of the same name by alternative rock band Hole on their album Live Through This. As a tie-in to the film, Boom! Studios produced a Jennifer’s Body graphic novel, released in August 2009.
Though the film was expected to pull in a significant number of the late teenage/young adult audience, particularly males aged 17 and older, while Cody hoped for a large female turnout, it earned a “disappointing” $2.8 million on its opening Friday and $6.8 million its opening weekend at the North American box office; the film placed #5, while 3D animated film Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs placed #1 with $30.1 million.
Produced for $16 million, Jennifer’s Body did manage to attract the sizable female audience Cody wanted; 51% were female, with 70% of patrons under age 25.[51] The film had been expected to benefit somewhat from its heavily marketed lesbian kissing scene between Fox and Seyfried, which, in addition to Fox being in the film, was thought to entice and successfully attract male viewers. Critic Jim Vejvoda at IGN stated that such a scene is not as shocking as it was in past decades and cannot be expected to significantly pull in an audience. The film grossed $16,204,793 domestically and $15,351,268 in international sales, for a worldwide total of $31,556,061.
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Jennifer’s Body (2009)
Directed by: Karyn Kusama
Starring: Megan Fox, Amanda Seyfried, Adam Brody, J.K. Simmons, Johnny Simmons, Kyle Gallner, Josh Emerson, Lance Henriksen, Diablo Cody, Juno Rinaldi, Cynthia Stevenson, Amy Sedaris, Sal Cortez
Screenplay by: Diablo Cody
Production Design by: Arvinder Grewal
Cinematography by: M. David Mullen
Film Editing by: Plummy Tucker
Costume Design by: Katia Stano
Set Decoration by: Joanne Leblanc
Art Direction by: Paolo G. Venturi
Music by: Stephen Barton, Theodore Shapiro
MPAA Rating: R for sexuality, bloody violence, language and brief drug use.
Distributed by: Fox Atomic
Release Date: September 18, 2009
Box Office Totals
Domestic: $16,204,793 (86.3%)
Foreign: $2,576,581 (13.7%)
Total: $18,781,374 (Worldwide)
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