It calls to mind the muscle memory of survivorhood and how the smallest thing can trigger the reflex of trauma. And upon hearing the song on the radio in her car, Needy screams and pounds the dashboard. After his attack on Jennifer, Nikolai’s stalker anthem “Through the Trees” is everywhere - including memorials for the students Jennifer has killed. Nikolai, Brody’s frontman character, embodies their look and sound. When discussing the film, she’s quick to bring up its emo, bro-dominant soundtrack: a buffet of the sensitive boy bands that shaped the decade, from Dashboard Confessional to Panic! at the Disco.
Summer Jade Leavitt recently picked Jennifer's Body for her ongoing queer film screening series in Pittsburgh. Rather than dying under the knife, the color guard captain returns to school the next day as the immortal spawn of Satan, with her appetite for teen boys having grown lethal. But Jennifer " I'm not even a backdoor virgin" Check does not go gently in death. Mirroring the 1994 Hole song about a kidnapping from which it borrows its name, irreverent bisexual high schooler Jennifer Check (played by Megan Fox) is abducted by an indie rock frontman (Adam Brody), who plans to offer her to the devil as a virgin sacrifice in return for a Fueled by Ramen record deal.
Told through the shiny veneer of major studio horror, Jennifer’s Body is a coming-of-age tragicomedy that disrupts tropes of female-led horror films and mocks the stereotypes that define teen girls IRL. Released in 2009, Jennifer's Body now ticks all of the boxes for what film audiences are now desperately demanding from Hollywood: Jennifer was created by an acerbic feminist writer (Diablo Cody) and revered female director (Karyn Kusama) its story centers thick-as-thieves teen girls and presents revenge against toxic masculinity as its protagonists’ only viable solution.
As the patriarchy atones for centuries of depravity, it too must reckon with the time it burned a movie at the stake for, like Hypatia or the witches of Salem, being too clairvoyant.