Spoilers for Jennifer's Body ahead
I recently watched Jennifer's Body for the first time.
Although I'd heard quite a bit about it, I wasn't entirely sure what to expect. Mostly, I'd heard that it had been mis-marketed; that while the trailers and posters targeted straight guys and focused on Megan Fox's sex appeal, the film was actually created by and for women, and was making a comeback in recent years as an underrated feminist masterpiece. I'd seen endless clips and gifs of Jennifer burning her tongue with a lighter, waving and smiling in a cheerleading uniform, and strutting through a high school hallway in a painfully 2009 outfit. I knew Diablo Cody had written the screenplay, Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried starred in the lead roles, and that Panic! at the Disco had written a song for the soundtrack. Based on all this information, I was expecting a high school black comedy somewhere between Mean Girls and Let the Right One In.
After seeing the movie, I don't think that description is entirely inaccurate – but I definitely didn't know as much about Jennifer's Body as I'd thought. In fact, I knew very little about it that wouldn't be immediately obvious to anyone who'd actually seen it. Interested to learn more, I decided to do some research on the inspiration, creation, and reception of the movie. Here's what I found out.
1. The movie shares its title with a song by Hole.
Alright, so maybe this one is actually common knowledge to anyone who was alive in the 90s, but I was surprised to learn that the movie's title comes from a 1993 Hole track of the same name. The song, from the album Live Through This, is loosely based on the case of Colleen Stan (warning: it's incredibly disturbing). While the song wasn't used on the movie's soundtrack, another song – Violet – from the same album was.
2. Pete Wentz was considered for the role of Nikolai
If you thought that this movie didn't quite capture the 2000s emo zeitgeist, you'll be happy to know that one possibility for the frontman of Low Shoulder was (reportedly) none other than Pete Wentz himself. Wentz, the bassist of Fall Out Boy, was apparently never a serious option for the role, perhaps due either to lack of interest or to Fall Out Boy's busy tour schedule at the time. Interestingly, Fall Out Boy would split in 2009 and go on hiatus for four years, allowing the members to work on other projects.
While the role of Nikolai eventually went to Adam Brody, there is still a shoutout to Fall Out Boy in the form of a poster on Jennifer's bedroom wall.
3. The movie was adapted into a graphic novel
If there's anything that underlines the sexist way Jennifer's Body was treated, it's the fact that it was adapted into a graphic novel that completely ignores the movie's protagonist in favour of retelling the story from the perspective of the male characters.
To be fair, I haven't read the graphic novel, so I have no idea if this shift is effective or not. At the very least, I'm a big fan of Jim Mahfood's art style. Mahfood was one of several artists to work on the book, which tells the individual story of each of Jennifer's victims, giving them more fleshed out backstories and internal worlds than we see in the movie. The graphic novel has mixed reviews, although the general consensus seems to be that it isn't as good as the movie – and the movie wasn't exactly a smash hit in and of itself.
4. ...and a musical
Jennifer's Body: The Unauthorized Musical From Hell saw Jennifer, Needy, Chip, and the rest of the characters bursting into song. The musical included songs like I Kissed A Girl, Die Another Day, and – of course – Through The Trees. While there doesn't seem to be a lot of information about the musical readily available, performances of some of the songs can be found on Youtube.
5. A photo double was used to film Jennifer's prosthetic jaw
The movie utilized practical effects (or a combination of practical and digital) wherever possible. One of those practical effects was a prosthetic jaw for the scenes where Jennifer's mouth opens inhumanly wide to reveal rows of pointy teeth. However, having Megan Fox herself wear the prosthetic was taking too long to shoot – so a photo double was hired to wear it instead.
In an interview with Animation World Network, Erik Nordby explained, "We hired a photo double and every day (for about 10 days) she would sit in a chair with this full appliance on her and we would shoot this jaw, and then all Megan would have to do is the dentures. So when it came time to shoot any of these jaw moments, Megan would act out in rehearsal how she was going to attack her victim and we'd fine tune that blocking so it was relatively locked. And the camera would be rehearsing through that as well. And it would roll and she would put her dentures in, and they would really distort her face, which was a nice side effect. And we'd put some contacts in as well. And then she would go through the exact same motions as normal Jennifer. But then I would shoot all the key poses that existed in whatever moves the digital double was doing, so that we had as much of that appliance in that lighting condition that we could get. KNB also created a hairless but high detailed head of the stage five Jennifer that had an articulating jaw."
If you haven't seen Jennifer's Body, now might be a good time to check it out. While it's not a perfect movie by any means, it's definitely better than the heavy backlash it faced upon release would have you believe – and much like Jennifer herself, it seems to be making its way back from the brink of death and growing strong again.
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