Megan Fox blames the failure of Jennifer’s Body on the backlash against her public image. As she prepares to return to the horror genre with ‘Till Death, Fox is looking back at what is arguably her most memorable role. Written by Diablo Cody and directed by Karyn Kusama, Jennifer’s Body was released in 2009. It starred Fox as a high school student who begins to mysteriously feed on her male classmates.
A blend of supernatural scares and comedy, the movie performed poorly at the box office and earned mixed reviews. But since its release, Jennifer’s Body has been reassessed as a modern feminist movie. Fox recently spoke out about the changing fortunes of Jennifer’s Body, and why she believes the movie never stood a chance.
Per IndieWire, in an interview on Eli Roth’s History of Horror: Uncut podcast, Fox offered her view on the popularity that Jennifer’s Body has experienced after its initial poor reception. While the actress noted that she was happy for Cody and Kusama, as both the writer and director worked hard to make the project a success, she explained that much of the backlash against the film had nothing to do with either of them.
“I was being vilified a little bit when the movie was getting ready for its release, it was that interesting juxtaposition to shooting up to extreme heights of fame right before the movie was released and then … the tearing me down was starting to happen. Then I had this immediate fallout with someone I worked in the industry. That happened right when I was on the press tour for ‘Jennifer’s Body.’ I think it all sort of exploded at once,” she said. “I think people definitely viewed me as negative or having bad intentions or just being really shallow and selfish, if it could be reduced and simplified even to that.”
It’s likely that Fox is referring to her controversial comments regarding Michael Bay, in which he compared the director to Hitler. The remarks led to her Transformers character being written out of the franchise, as well as a slew of conflicting reports about who made the decision to fire the actress. It’s likely, as well, that the controversy altered the way that many critics were willing to perceive Jennifer’s Body. For many months in 2009, just as promotion for Jennifer’s Body was ramping up, the public view of Fox wasn’t particularly charitable. Some rightly pointed to the insensitivity of her comparison, while others took issue with her work ethic. Fox and Bay would eventually mend their differences, collaborating on 2014’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and its sequel. But, for a time, it’s certainly feasible that Fox’s public persona clashed with her professional career.
Jennifer’s Body faced other hurdles, though. As Cody has expressed, it was marketed incorrectly and the promotion of it failed in appealing to a potential audience of young women. Another issue, perhaps the biggest, was the lack of diverse perspective among mainstream critics. Reviewers who criticized the film neglected to truly engage with its themes and overall message. Although it is certainly fair to point out that Jennifer’s Body suffered from narrative flaws, the film was met with a wholesale dismissal that can be unfortunately commonplace for stories geared towards young women. It’s reminiscent of the Twilight franchise. For all of its notable shortcomings, few commentators were willing to grapple with what made the stories such a global phenomenon in the first place. Thankfully, in part due to social media, which has assisted in the emergence of a more diverse group of pop culture writers, movies such as Jennifer’s Body have garnered more balanced reexaminations.
Source: Eli Roth's History of Horror: Uncut (via IndieWire)