For a certain style of femme-forward horror movie, there are two eras: BJB (before Jennifer’s Body) and AJB (after Jennifer’s Body). The influence of the movie has been huge, albeit a bit delayed: Although it’s since been re-evaluated, director Karyn Kusama and screenwriter Diablo Cody’s horror collaboration was considered a failure upon its initial release. The world wasn’t quite ready for Jennifer’s Body back in 2009, but in 2026, it’s never been more relevant. It’s also easier to watch than ever, now that it’s streaming on Netflix.
In retrospect, marketing this movie—a female-led horror-comedy about slut-shaming and female friendship—to teenage boys just because one of its stars was considered a sex symbol was a ridiculous thing to do. But that’s exactly what 20th Century Fox did, running trailers that spotlighted a brief scene where Jennifer (Megan Fox) goes skinny-dipping and sexualizing the star on posters for the film. It backfired, as Jennifer’s Body was dismissed by critics and underperformed at the box office. Since then, co-star Amanda Seyfried has blamed the marketing for the film’s poor performance, saying, “The marketing sucked. It just did. And we all agree.”
At the time, Fox was best known as the star of the Transformers movies, and Kusama deliberately set out to play with that bombshell image by casting her in the role of Jennifer Check, a high school student who becomes a blood-drinking succubus after a run-in with a Satanic emo band on the night of a devastating fire. Even before her transformation, Jennifer has an edge to her: One of the movie’s chief pleasures is in its witty dialogue, often enhanced with an eye roll and a hair toss from Fox. But it really sings when paired with bloody scenes where Jennifer rips horny high-school boys to shreds— a confrontational tactic that was too much for the male viewers studios were banking on to support a Megan Fox movie in 2009.
Meanwhile, the film’s true audience of horror-loving teenage girls was quietly assembling in the background, drawn to the complicated relationship at its center. In Jennifer’s Body, boys are disposable, but BFFs are forever. Seyfried co-stars as Jennifer’s childhood best friend and foil Anita "Needy" Lesnick, the first person to notice that Jennifer’s man-eating ways have become violently literal, and the only one who tries to stop her killing spree.
The film’s best back-and-forth is between the friends: “You're killing people?” Needy asks. “No, I'm killing boys,” Jennifer replies. The chemistry between the stars is also fantastic, lending the film a refreshing queer subtext that rises to the surface in one of the film’s most memorable scenes.
Over the past 17 years, Jennifer’s Body has risen through the horror canon from a flop to a cult classic to an iconic movie of its era—so much so that it’s difficult to call it “underrated” at this point. For today’s teenage girls, it’s a classic, a fierce, claws-out statement of defiance against those who would like to see them tamed. A sequel is even in development, from a script Cody calls a “deeply personal” reaction to the original’s poor reception and ultimate redemption.
Although the popular culture of the ‘00s rarely acknowledged this fact, girls and women do like horror movies. They always have. They especially like it when a horror movie is made with them in mind, as Kusama, Cody, and the cast have all said was their intention when making Jennifer’s Body. And in the end, no amount of marketing misdirection was enough to keep the real fans away.
Jennifer’s Body is now streaming on Netflix.
