Retrospective Film Review

Jennifer’s Body (2009) • 15 Years Later — clever horror that flips the script

A newly-possessed high-school cheerleader turns into a succubus who specializes in killing her male classmates.

Few films have experienced such an ascent in public opinion as the horror-comedy revenge tale Jennifer’s Body. 15 years after a lacklustre reception in 2009, it’s now regarded not only as a cult classic but as a pop feminist juggernaut. It took that long for the film to finally find an audience that appreciates its boldness, its weirdness, and its reversal of gendered horror tropes.

From the film’s first moments, director Karyn Kusama (Destroyer) and writer Diablo Cody (Lisa Frankenstein) subvert the genre’s well-worn clichés. The camera tracks through a dark suburban backyard, a POV that suggests a predator hunting its prey, to reveal Jennifer Check (Megan Fox) alone in her pink bedroom, Fall Out Boy poster above her bed. This is the familiar territory of Scream Queens and Final Girls, of women meeting violent ends at the hands of murderous men. But when the camera…