November 2024: movie review

“The film that represented the Me Too” movement (a no spoiler review) of Jennifer’s Body!

The many years of struggling to believe women are felt and shown in the 2009 film “Jennifer’s Body” about a bisexual high school cheerleader named Jennifer Check who turns into a demon and has to eat boys to survive. The film is brave for showing in 2009 the handling of mental health in high school, representing how teen girls act and the abusive power celebrities have towards women.

The writer of the film Diablo Cody and director Karyn Kusama does a stunning job of leaving an important message for the audience. Throughout the film, many scenes left me with many questions, not about the movie about the the world and myself. One of them is at the beginning of the film when Jennifer Check (the protagonist) gets into the rock stars' band Low Shoulder van after a horrible fire at a bar where the band was performing. The scene left me with, why as young women we get judged and laughed at for going with an older guy somewhere we don’t know or do know? Why is it never a protection for us? Why isn’t a conversation being had on how terrible this can end up being?

All of those questions pop into my head watching Jennifer Check getting into that van and her best friend Needy not doing her best to try to stop her. 

Karyn Kusama and Diablo Cody magnificently capture the struggles of being a teenage girl and a woman. Not being believed, getting constantly told you are insane (this didn’t happen), getting constantly ridiculed for every little thing how you dress, being a virgin.

The women behind the scenes working on the film capture it all so well. The film like many women didn’t get a chance to get listened to with a Rotten Tomato (a movie and TV critic site) score of 46 percent out of 100% and it bombing at the box office in 2009 grossing 16 million dollars around the world with a 32 million dollar budget  (IMDB.com reported about the film) due to the poor marketing by the studio focusing on actress Megan Fox (who plays Jennifer Check) show off her body and attitude in ads for the movie. Actress Megan talked about in an “Entertainment Tonight” interview celebrating the 10th anniversary of the film titled “Jennifer's Body Reunion: Megan Fox and Diablo Cody Get Candid About Hollywood (Exclusive)”.

“Jennifer’s Body” should have been marketed as a tale for women that your not alone, the majority of men are the problem. The film not based on a true story but as a similar tale to the 1995 killing of teenage girl Elyse Pahler (a teen who was killed by a teen band who sacrificed her body to become famous the same way as the protagonist Jennifer Check.

Similar to Elyse the main character didn’t get justice and was hardly talked about by the media with Elyse’s killers not even getting sent to death row instead only getting life in prison with the possibility of parole. In the reporting from the Meduim.com article“The Satanic Torture-Murder of Elyse Pahler.”

The film and the court case of Elyse Pahler detail why justice is so important when it comes to the mistreatment of not only women but underage girls who don’t even know any better. Girls who don’t even know how to live in society. 

“Jennifer’s Body” showed why we as human beings act the way we do. When it comes to being a man it's the constant need for power to always be right. “Jennifer’s Body” wasn’t only ahead of its time it sparked a conversation on the mistreatment girls and women face daily. “Jennifer’s Body is a thriller about how a teenage girl feels on the inside tired of being taken advantage of and feeling unloved.