Creating a "Monster": An Investigation of Jennifer Check and Mandy Lane
And why we love to see it.
This piece contains spoilers for Jennifer’s Body and All the Boys Love Mandy Lane. Proceed with caution.
PROLOGUE: How did I get here?
As long as I’ve been writing The Not J*ss Newsletter, I’ve had it in my head that I ought to write a piece on the importance of Jennifer’s Body to me. This is both because it is a favorite movie of mine that has had so much true and real impact on me… but also at Siyyan’s insistence. You win, Siyyan! It’s here! Do you see it? It’s here!
However, this piece has proven especially difficult to write in execution. I’ve drafted countless efforts to articulate how special of a gem this film is, the prevailing issue for me was finding an angle to discuss it with. This has become an especially iconic film in the wake of post-2017 society, many of pieces have been published on the misunderstood intent of its script, its feminist lens, its queerness, and why it’s actually just a really great movie all around. Trouble is, now what could I possibly add to the table of discourse? In reality, I cheated. I mean, you won’t leave this piece without understanding why this movie is important to me personally, but I found my angle through the lens of comparison.
PART I: An Introduction to Jennifer Check.
In 2010, I saw Jennifer’s Body for the first time. I couldn’t see it in theaters, it came out when I was 9 after all, but I remember it being promoted very well. Megan Fox was the it girl of the 00s, and this was at the peak of Transformers hype, Amanda Seyfried was quickly establishing herself as a total movie star at this point, Diablo Cody was fresh off winning an Oscar. It seemed destined to become a classic. Immediately upon watching it became a favorite of mine. A few years later, I was stunned to find out how widely panned it had been, like did I watch the same movie as everybody else? That just did not compute in my head! This film has since gone through an era of reappraisal and critical re-examination, and when that happened, I was just wondering where you all were! Hello!!! I’ve been saying!!
Jennifer’s Body is about a teenage girl who is the victim of a failed virgin sacrifice, which causes a man-eating demon to possess her. When she is fed, she kind of is on top of her game, she is a powerful, ethereal being. When she is starved, she essentially falls apart.
There’s a growing group of people that do NOT understand the appeal of this movie, and they’re very loud about it any time it comes up. As praised as it has become, a counterculture grew. As a day one enthusiast, I get a bit defensive… like, no no… you don’t get to come into my home and proceed to rob me like this? What makes you think that is okay? I have grown defensive of this property, similarly to how I have grown defensive of Megan Fox. You don’t get it, you don’t get her, like I do. There’s an intellectual bond I have with Jennifer Check that I don’t believe everybody else has. People use the aesthetic of Jennifer’s Body, but are they true to it? I must pose the question, because I want allies. We musn’t regress! The only person I can trust is Rachel Sennott.
Diablo Cody’s work has been there for me through several eras of my Coming-of-Age. I’ve already discussed my love for Young Adult, but Jennifer’s Body is just… different. The concept of a girl who gets her life taken from her (literally in the film but it is very easily inserted as an allegory for sexual assault) and is taken over by a man-eating demon is just something so inherently powerful in meaning. At a young age, I just got it. I understood how important that is.
The dialogue to this movie above all else is also so iconic. Even if you hate Diablo Cody’s pen and think she’s corny, there’s an instantly recognizable tone to her writing. I truly think next to Mean Girls this is the most instantly recognizable script of the 21st Century. You have to give her that, you just have to! Even the deniers can’t say this movie doesn’t have a distinct tone.
To add onto my clear bias, I latched onto Megan Fox as soon as I saw her for the first time. I was fooling myself by thinking I wanted her, well… that, too, but I really wanted to be her. She emulated such a natural feminine energy. That’s what a woman is. Such a commanding presence on screen, with natural comedic prowess. Nobody really brings what she has, she’s so herself. I spend my free time watching interviews of her, because without fail her energy just magnetizes me. When she was getting blacklisted for comparing Michael Bay to Hitler, I was always defending her. Fuck the gossip, I will always shoot for one Megan Fox! No slander of hers around me is allowed, do not piss me off!!!!!!
To conclude this Part of the issue… I didn’t want to confess this, but long ago I tweeted something soooo dumb about Jennifer’s Body. It actually kind of haunts me, and I want to take my chance to amend it now. Thank God it’s deleted, but I implied people “missed the point” of the movie if they call it a “good for her” movie, considering it starts with her getting murdered by Adam Brody’s band, and then she gets re-murdered at the end to slay the demon. I do get what I was theoretically saying. Can it REALLY be “good for her” if she dies twice? But I also believe I was very misguided in implying it’s a false sentiment to have. It’s a very satisfying watch, especially when it ends with Needy murdering the band and avenging Jennifer. I truly just wanted to act like I knew better than everybody else and that I’m the only one who gets to have a say on the movie. There is such power in being dehumanized to the highest degree but coming back as a powerful being that feeds off of the fear of men. While you (my past self) may wish she could’ve gotten the ultimate revenge on the people that murdered her to begin with, the bow-tied end of the one person who always tried to see the humanity in her, despite when she actively was harming those close to her, getting her lick back is ultimately the perfect conclusion to the narrative.
PART II: An Introduction to Mandy Lane.
Just last year I watched the movie All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, starring the more than deserving of respect and protection Amber Heard, for the first time. While plenty of other movies have done similar things, these two films exist as companion pieces to me. Perhaps not in style or even quality, but both exist in a capacity that encourages conversation and different perspectives upon viewing. Jennifer’s Body has been subject of endless discussion, viewed from countless different angles, whereas Mandy Lane feels underexplored and forgotten in this genre. I bring it up as often as I feel as though my followers will tolerate but I’ve yet to actually discuss it at length. Now is my chance!
Mandy Lane is a girl who seems quite reserved and doesn’t fit in with her peers necessarily. She’s decently popular, but clearly as a result of being sexualized or objectified by the men around her. It seems heavily implied that if she wasn’t the object of every male’s affection, she would not be in community with the people she happens to be. They want to “possess” her. In an early scene, a boy accidentally drunkenly falls to his death in what is, more or less, a bid to impress Mandy. After 9 months have passed, she goes with her classmates to a weekend party at a ranch. Classic slasher set up, very classic slasher core. The group starts getting whacked off one by one, and you think you’re just getting a pretty standard slasher, where Mandy Lane will be the final material girl. It’s not until the third act where we discover that all along Mandy Lane was in allyship with the killer and had a masterplan with him to do a murder spree-double suicide. However, she actually had the ultimate masterplan and got him killed and made it appear as though she was being attacked. The perfect crime.
I don’t particularly love this movie aesthetically, or even the writing, but the character of Mandy Lane, and the performance delivered by Amber, is one I’ll never forget.
PART III: And what exactly do these two movies have in common?
Not too much! But at the center of both are characters who are driven to, one would call, monstrous actions as a result of the wrongdoings of men.
I didn’t do much of any reading up on the writing or directorial intent of Mandy Lane, because I just don’t think creator intent is the end all be all of interpretation. I’m not confident that Jonathan Levine meant for a feminist lens to be applied to his script of a teen girl aiding a massacre of her peers. A lot of the feminist spins on horror twists you see come from the post-Gone Girl era. Mandy Lane was made nearly a decade earlier. Even accidentally, though, I believe how it has aged amongst the adjusting societal standards of media is worth considering in our collective vision. Everybody around Mandy in this movie had treated her as an object they only wanted to engage with when it benefited them, sexually or otherwise. From beginning and even closing to the end, this was exemplified. I can comfortably say that, perhaps it wasn’t meant to make a feminist statement with the script, you can clearly see that the dehumanization and mistreatment she had faced is what drove her to become the villain. While I’m not comfortable to say that the writing was meant to be interpreted as feminist, watching this in a post-MeToo era, makes it hard not to perceive it through that lens, for me at least. The ultimate narrative condemnation of male harassment. Women got whacked, too, but that’s just… like, life I guess, and one of the girls particularly was consistently part of “The Problem” anyways.
A criticism you’ll see for both movies is the sexualization of their titular characters. I suppose necessary context here is that the promotional material of Jennifer’s Body was entirely focused on a hyper-sexualized Megan, clearly catering to a straight male audience. When the movie itself dealt with female friendship, feminism, it drew backlash, like… “wait! I came here to fetishize Megan Fox, what’s all this girly garbage :/ this is so not alpha male!!!” In my opinion, which is not at all the end-all be-all of critical thought, these movies may have had a few uncomfortable shots throughout, but all was done with thematic intent. The text was aware of what it was doing. They were being sexualized through the lens of characters objectifying them, or at times through the women themselves utilizing the perception of others for their own plans. Again, is that an end-all of criticism? No, but it’s the context that sets it apart. These weren’t attempts to cater to male audiences. Men idealized, men objectified, men harassed both characters. In the end, it became the men’s downfall. The women flipped the script on being objectified. In a way by weaponizing their own sexuality. Now, this can cause a whole other discourse: is self-objectification actually empowering? I personally don’t think it has to be to be portrayed, but it is a conversation that could be had.
Another layer to this point and why I hold these two so closely together, is their leads. Amber Heard and Megan Fox. Women who have been, and still are, notoriously disrespected by the public and the media. Perhaps back when it was made in 2006 or released in 2013 it didn’t read in the same way, but watching Mandy Lane in 2023, seeing Amber Heard, one of the most disrespected women… of all time, literally, take control over the people who had mistreated her, is something powerful, even just in fiction. Of course, this was made before anything happened, but in 2023, I can’t separate that from how I feel. Back in 2009, it was especially relevant for Megan Fox, though. I don’t want to project victimhood onto her, but I have watched sooooo many interviews of hers. From back to even when she was a teenager, there’s such a bizarre tone to how she is spoken to by OLD PEOPLE, old MEN namely. She was forced into a very grown mature role. They did not see her as a young girl, they saw her as… for whatever reason, a sexualized being. Mind you, as far back as being a teenager, a CHILD. Seeing a movie where she just gets to reclaim full power of her womanhood is something I’m so glad we, as a society, have.
CONCLUSION: I don’t have one.
I still don’t know if I adequately conveyed what makes Jennifer’s Body so special, and that’s what I came into this for. I just hope you can watch it… and see! You should be able to do that? Like, you havee to get it. I didn’t run Chip-Needy ship pages on Instagram in the early-to-mid 2010s for no reason. The characters (outside of the obvious) were all likable in their own ways, having the trademark Diablo Cody writing but still having distinctive personalities that set each of them apart. The journey of Jennifer and Needy coming to a head in the third act, which circles back around to the first scene of Needy being held in solitary confinement, and then breaking out to get her final revenge on The Band. It’s just such a great script. I want to study it. I want to study everything Diablo Cody has ever written. It’s part of my personality now. As someone who has been abused, it’s so easy to imagine myself in a character such as Jennifer, who is essentially a victim or a survivor more than a “predator” despite what the movie’s plot may actually be.
Aesthetically, it tells a visually strong story. The shot of Jennifer walking down the hallway in her bright pink, as powerful as ever, as everyone around her is grayed out and depressed. Contrasting that to when she is in the classroom, weak and at her lowest. People compare this to Ginger Snaps, and although as stories they parallel one another, I don’t actually view them as comparable or equal to one another. That is all I have to say about that, because I don’t want to offend the Ginger Snaps community.
It’s hard to discuss Jennifer’s Body without bringing up the queer text of it all… and I fear I’m at the end of this issue and can’t really just bring it up now… but let it be known that Jennifer Check made me the 23-year-old trans bisexual that I am today.
finally someone who gets and appreciates Jennifer’s Body like I do lol! I watched it for the first time when I was around 14 I think. Life changing fr. It’s funny bc I had the same thoughts about people misplacing the film into the “good for her” category but your analysis has got me thinking.