Jennifer's Body (2009) - Why is it such a cult hit? I loved it, and discovered a few others yesterday who seemed to absolutely love it too.

It wasn’t marketed properly, basically.

It was trashed when it came out and Megan was overexposed. I saw it last year and I thought it was really good. I liked the nerd girl vs cool girl concept that was actually friends first and then become enemies later. Its usually the reverse. The end scene is awesome. I think its Megan's best role.

The trailers for it were pretty bad that made it seem like a "this movie is going to suck but Fox is hot" type t&a flick. I never saw it but I remember that being most of the jokes about it

at teh time, Diablo Cody and Megan Fox had a stranglehold on pop culture and teen audiences, so while it wasnt a box office smash, it had, like you said, a specific voice that resonated with millenials On top of that, it had earned a retrospective interpretation that has given the film more of a positive existence as a feminist classic. This made it an especially resonate film for women and queer people, who now view it as a revenge fantasy rather than a male fantasy

Right? It was way ahead of its time. The marketing sold it as a male-gaze horror flick, but its actually a sharp, dark comedy about female friendship and trauma. We were all just too early.

The marketing basically killed its chances at a decent box office profit, marketing it squarely at horny teen boys who thirsted over Megan Fox. The cast and crew intended for the targeted audience to be teenage girls and college age women (17-24). The movie's screenwriter Diablo Cody (not her real name but a pen name) sent an email to an exec asking what the value of the movie was to them after expressing her opinion, the response she got was 'Megan Fox hot'. A test screening audience full of teen boys wrote the phrase 'needs moar bewbs' exactly like that after being asked what should be added to improve the movie. Diablo Cody has said that kind of feedback was being taken seriously. Director Karyn Kusama said she had to fervently turn down a marketing idea that would have had Megan Fox promote the movie via live chats on a p*** site. When asking the marketing team what their marketing strategy was, both Cody and Kusama got an email that said 'Jennifer s***, she steal your boyfriend.' As a result of this and the pop culture backlash against Cody's writing style and the nationwide witch hunt against Fox (and other young famous women) at the time on early social media and tabloid sites like Perez Hilton and TMZ, the movie got mixed to negative reviews, saying Megan was a bad actress who should stick to posing in magazines/being hot and that if it wasn't for Michael Bay's Transformers movies, she'd be doing p***. And Cody got labeled as a 'hack' and 'pretentious'. Both women suffered mental breakdowns and had to enter therapy because the bullying from both peers in the industry and the unwashed masses was that extreme.

I agree with the other comments here. The marketing made it seem like just a c**** "Megan Fox is hot" vehicle, and it had to slowly gain popularity over the years through word-of-mouth from people who had actually watched it instead of disregarding it out of hand. (I was one of the people who disregarded it at the time)

It was marketed terribly. Not just trailers, but every aspect was to market a different story and solely focus on Megan Fox as the sex symbol to sell the movie. You could barely figure out what the movie was going to be about. On top of that, the theatrical cut is pretty bad. The theatrical cut is a rushed and shortened version to get to the action faster. There's very minimal effort to create a story or build characters in the theatrical cut. Anyone can defend it by saying anything but it's far from a guilty pleasure for how bad they cut it up for a quick release. The "unrated" director's cut is a much better story with more character development and a much more refined story that actually makes sense. This was the version they should have just released in the first place. This is where you actually cared about the characters and where the story was going. In the commentary, they talk about it being an extended director's cut instead of unrated. Unrated is just the marketing term to trick audiences into looking for b***. The R rating also threw people off because people expecting to see a lot of nudity. There is a shot of "Jennifer" swimming in the lake n***, but that was a double for Megan Fox. She wasn't willing to do any sort of scene. I remember renting it and then seeing an unrated edition so I rented that one and found the better movie. To illustrate how bad the marketing was, for Family Guy, there was a small bit about Brian and Stewie needing to go somewhere but Brian wanted to watch Jennifer's Body and Stewie comments that there's no nudity so Brian gets upset over the rating, "so it's rated R for curses? God, this country." [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mxl3gGdKEbg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mxl3gGdKEbg) It's such a mismanaged movie because the unrated version is great.

Only in Hollywood would Amanda Seyfried be cast as "the homely one."

Issue 1: movie made for young women, which means going through a few more hoops acceptance-wise Issue 2: Megan was really in the public eye and you know how the public turns. She was also seen as not a good actor. Issue 3: written by Diablo Coby, who'd gotten famous (and infamous) for writing *Juno*, a hugely watched but divisive movie. See also: made by woman factor Issue 4: It's got the appearance of being pure 2000s trash, looks like an episode of "Buffy", but (like a lot of cult movies) had a lot under the surface that wasn't properly looked at for some time.

It was marketed poorly. The actual content of the movie deals with themes of the struggles of feminine, and especially queer feminine, adolescence, making it very relatable and enjoyable for young women and LGBT folks. But, for some reason they tried to market it to teen boys. The trailers for it were edited to make it look like a throwaway popcorn flick that would titillate horny young men and otherwise didn’t have much to offer. That framing turned off most of the people who would have actually enjoyed it, and the folks who did watch it expecting what the trailers teased were disappointed.

Yeah, i don't know why was it received so poorly. I didn't pay much attention to it at the time it was released, and only watched it recently, because i like Diablo Cody. Thought it was a perfectly solid, fun film, and i really couldn't tell where people's animosity towards it was coming from. Definitely a better movie than it's ratings might suggest.

I choose to believe it’s because it has a the perfect soundtrack. It’s the only movie soundtrack I listen to regularly especially around the fall season.

Megan Fox burnout. I feel like our had been a trend since the mid 90s that some young star catches attention and gets promoted to the point people get annoyed and then the person either completely falls off, or has a slower build later where they've earned the attention on their merits over their looks.

The scene where Amanda Seyfried sparta kicks the orderly and says "I recommend you shut the f*** up!" has lived rent free in my head for the past 17 years. Not much else from the movie was at all memorable, sadly.

I honestly hate what this movie has become. People wrote it off as a cliche slasher with a hot lady as the killer, but it had a bit more substance than that. Megan Fox was very poorly treated at the time by media and people in the business, which is why people now kinda ignore her distasteful choices and give her grace. Now people seem to prop it up as some great feminist film; when I feel like it has a pretty misguided and gross message ultimately. Like she ends up killing a bunch of people unrelated to her being harmed, by luring them into sexually compromised positions…and it’s pretty queer-baity. Since we are mentioning it, I have been a horror fan my entire life and saw this when it came out (I was like 15). Im non-binary and pan.

Almost no horror movies of that era were huge hits. They were all cult hits at best. It was seen as a bit of a Ginger Snaps ripoff amongst horror fans but most are over that now.

It lost me at the very end when it switched from a horror movie to a superhero movie.

I was 15 years old and a huge panic at the disco fan when this movie came out. I never saw the movie but I loved that song.

It's a great movie that suffered a terrible marketing campaign. It resonates with women who've been taken advantage of. 

For me, it was how it was at once campy/humorous/self-aware, AND scary, AND a great story with a complete story arc. Ooooh, the scene where Jennifer first turns and shows up at Needy's house, yipes!  Other parts were much sillier and campier, which made it feel more fun and like a regular watch (as opposed to a movie I'd watch with the cover over my head, lol, like through the weave of the blanket).  Plus, it had a message over the top of it!  It hit all the notes, I think. A little bit of everything! 

Low Shoulder is an awesome band name.

I watched this in a cinema for the first time last year and laugh-choked on an alcoholic beverage and couldn't stop sputtering for what felt like forever but was probably only like 20 seconds, I recommend getting drunk while watching this movie

I actually enjoyed the movie. They did a good job at making it quite comedic and it was just generally good. I haven't seen it in a long time so I can't recall specifics.

It explained Maroon 5

Loved it.

I was surprised when I first saw the trailer because Amanda Seyfried playing Needy? I mean I wouldn't have expected them to cast her in that role. Meghan Fox, yes that was expected. Also anything with the occult interested me. Sad to say, the reviews trashed it so badly even though it is a fun movie, loads of subtext, and pretty good performances, and i loved the ending. I would have loved more about that world and those characters- wish it was written as a UF book series, it would have totally worked.

It's meh

I didn't see it upon release, even though most of my favourite bands at the time contributed to the soundtrack (Paramore, CIWWAF, Panic). But I watched it about 2 years ago and absolutely loved it. Such an underrated gem, really fun, and really spoke to me as a queer person.

The script is a masterpiece. Absolutely crackles with a very specific kind of humour.

The movie flopped at first because it was marketed for the male gaze and male fans of horror. When in actuality it’s for the girls, the gays and the theys. It’s about the horror of girlhood. They heavily played up the scene where Needy and Meghan kiss in the trailer.

Recommend this video essay for those interested in more on the subject. Looks at the bad marketing treatment the movie got: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llQ_OpOl7Qg

If I remember well, when it came out it was mediatized because Megan Fox was a « rising » star but it started to fascinate people because it was pretty violent and it reversed the cliché of the hot girl and nerd girl. At that time, horror movies was still liked by youngsters so it attracted attention.

I like it too

My car is in that movie! They filmed outside our place in the middle of the night.

it did sort of ruin that Tommy Tutone song for me... 😂

Megan Fox’s best performance in her career.

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I despised that movie. I literally took the dvd out, broke it in half and threw it away afterwards. Abomination of a film.

The main reason is because of Megan Fox 😂 like all the homies and I would look at all the set pics that would leak as they were filming. You also have to think about where it sits as kind of like an alternative mean girls the soundtrack alone is legendary. That film is literally all the stars aligning to create something only the Cosmos could recreate. U guys should own every dvd version !

It’s the perfect mix of campy horror, dark humor, and messy, magnetic high school dynamics with a unique feminine edge that sticks with you.

That specific feminine menace totally nails it. And yeah, it's definitely a favorite for a lot of women I know too!