Let’s throw it back to a feminist cult classic!
Hey Fleshbot fans! Welcome to October and if you’ve been reading me here for a while, you know that Throwback Thursday in October means spooky Halloween-themed sexiness, and this year, we’re doing a few weeks of sexy mainstream horror movies to mix things up a bit. My pick for this week is 2009’s Jennifer’s Body, directed by Diablo Cody and starring Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried.
It doesn’t feel like 15 years ago that this movie came out, but time flies when you’re having fun! We open the film on Anita “Needy” Lesnicki (Seyfried.) She’s in a mental institution and appears to be there for life. This is not a great start!
Needy begins to narrate the story of how she came to live there and it all starts with Needy and her best friend Jennifer Check (Fox), queen bee(yotch) of their school in Devil’s Kettle, Minnesota. Needy also has a boyfriend called Chip. Needy is less a best friend and more of Jennifer’s sycophantic hanger-on, much like her character of Karen from Mean Girls, just not as dumb. Needy actually is smart enough to figure out what’s going on and that is ultimately what makes her lose her shit.
The girls go to see a live band at the neighborhood dive bar, which goes up in flames during the show and Jennifer ditches Needy to get in a van with the band guys and go party. Needy is stressed about this and later in the evening, Jennifer shows up at her house not drunk or high but vomiting chunky blood and devouring food out of the fridge. I’ve had some rough nights, but damn…. As if the tragic fire wasn’t enough, a series of grisly killings in Devil’s Kettle occur, and Jennifer also tries to get with Needy in a sexual way, because her interests now consist of two things-- fucking and killing.
Jennifer finally fesses up to Needy what’s going on. The band (called Low Shoulder) intended to sacrifice her as a virgin to Satan in exchange for fame. Problem is, she wasn’t a virgin so she just got permanently possessed by Satan and that, ladies, gents, and those beyond the binary, is how you get a succubus!
Needy tells all of this to Chip who thinks she’s lost it, and she dumps him for not believing her. Chip fucks around and finds out and is Jennifer’s next victim. This here is when Needy loses it entirely, and I’m not telling you the final act, you’ll have to turn off the lights, grab some popcorn and some sort of bloody looking red beverage, and have a gander at this sexy cinematic succubus. It’s good on many levels and really loves playing with tropes and stereotypes.
Jennifer’s Body is available to stream (at press time) on Disney+ and Hulu as well as free streaming service Tubi.