The betrayal Amanda Seyfried will never forgive: “I think they ruined it”
There’s surely nothing more frustrating for an actor than being part of a movie you genuinely love and feel proud of, only for it to completely flop.
In this instance, there’s very little you can do apart from lament what could’ve been, which is how Amanda Seyfried feels about a certain movie of hers that she believes was grossly misunderstood. Following the success of Mean Girls, in which she played the airheaded Karen, Seyfried started to attract roles in further female-oriented movies like Mamma Mia! and Letters to Juliet, but one that emerged during this time that also had female viewers in mind was completely mismarketed, failing as a result.
2009’s Jennifer’s Body was intended to be consumed through a feminist lens, with Seyfried playing the nerdy Needy, who has long been best friends with the popular Jennifer, portrayed by Megan Fox. The pair might seem worlds apart, but their friendship is a strange one, bound by obsession and power struggle, and things soon take a turn when Jennifer starts acting demonically.
The campy horror was intended by writer Diablo Cody and director Karyn Kusama to explore themes of female sacrifice and the way that men so often take advantage of women’s bodies, but that’s not how the movie was marketed. Fox’s character is sacrificed by a group of young male musicians who want to be famous, and her man-eating (quite literally) response reflects a powerful and visceral rebellion against such abuses of power, while the marketing just wanted men to come leer at Fox.
Cody once revealed, “I know it’s so cheap to blame things on external shit, but the movie was marketed all wrong. I’m not usually an argumentative person. In fact, I’m really passive. But that was like the one time I’ve gotten in a fight, because I was so furious. They said, ‘We want to market this movie to boys who like Megan Fox. That’s who’s going to go see it’. And I was, like, ‘No! This movie is for girls [too]!’ That audience, they did not attempt to reach.”
The image of Fox in skimpy outfits adorned various posters of the movie, attempting to capitalise on her popularity following her role in Transformers. The movie was never going to be seen by the right audience with marketing like this, and only years on has Jennifer’s Body become a cult favourite, standing as an essential piece of feminist horror.
Seyfried agrees with Cody, relaying in a GQ interview, “If the critics criticise anything, it would be the marketing. The marketing sucked, it just did. And we all agree”. She highlighted that it was reduced to something less interesting, stating that the marketing “cheapened it like it was just a gory romp”.
“I think they ruined it,” she said. It’s a shame, because Jennifer’s Body is great fun, underscored by a vision of abject feminine horror, with Fox turning into a grotesque monster and attacking those who treat her as nothing more than her body.
“That movie was very much about the issues that women face and about the feeling of being powerless and about the feeling of wanting to turn the tables,” Cody told Vox, but instead, it was advertised completely wrong, attracting the exact audience that it was attacking.
