This has to do with the fact that times have changed. Today, it is known for the sharp dialogue, written excellently by Diablo Cody, and its underlying feminist themes. The film starts out as a classic high school story, with Jennifer playing the typical hot, bitchy girl and Needy tagging along as the nerdy and insecure friend. After a horrible fire at a local bar where an indie band is playing, Jennifer returns to Needy as a boy-eating demon.
As their friendship begins to deteriorate and more people are murdered, the movie turns into a wonderfully violent feminist tale about female relationships, beauty, and sexuality. Jennifer constantly undermines Needy and pokes at her insecurities. Needy seems to always be walking a thin line with her. However, the night goes on without mention of the aggressive act. Details like this all point to classic toxic female friendships that so many of us encounter in our adolescence.
It is both comedic and sad to see the two of them struggle against each other. But underneath the restrained hostility between them, there still appears to be a love for one another. After Jennifer explains to Needy that she is eating boys to survive, she explains that she could never hurt Needy. What adds another layer to this complex friendship is the idea that Needy, and perhaps Jennifer, have romantic feelings towards one another. This is made most clear in the iconic bedroom scene in which Jennifer and Needy make out.
Known as one of the best female makeout scenes in a film, this scene resonates with people for many reasons. On a surface level, the scene appears to be pointed at exciting the male audience.
However, if you have been paying any attention at all to the rest of the movie, this scene means so much more. Needy clearly has feelings for Jennifer that go beyond friendship. Her relationship with her boyfriend appears to be dull and unexciting.
Clearly Needy is not interested in Chip during this moment, which is made even more apparent when the very next scene is her making out with Jennifer. This is not the only scene where Needy is shown having an attraction towards Jennifer.
As the song reaches its emotional chorus, Needy looks at her best friend like she wants more. Once the chorus fades out, Jennifer drops her hand and is solely focused on the cute lead singer in front of her. The possibility of the girls having feelings for one another is treated respectfully and realistically. Her silent duplicity toward Needy—in effect, her gaslighting of Needy—is a matter of life and death. The power of the idea, though—of the silencing of both Jennifer and Needy in the face of a ruthless young patriarchy—is strangely subordinated in the movie.
Yet the twist is far more than a mere mocking of maudlin expressions of public sentiment: when Needy calls the group out for its smarmy profiteering, another girl, an Asian classmate named Chastity Valerie Tian , defends the band for its noble gesture—a strange symbolic representation of females publicly siding with predatory men.
Both films are ultimately more gratifying as illustrations of ideas than as experiences. Richard Brody began writing for The New Yorker in He writes about movies in his blog, The Front Row. One night, Jennifer takes Needy to a local dive bar to attend a concert by indie rock band Low Shoulder. A suspicious fire engulfs the bar, killing several, and Jennifer who is in shock, agrees to leave with the band despite Needy's attempts to stop her. Later that evening, Jennifer, covered in blood, appears in Needy's kitchen and proceeds to eat food from the refrigerator.
Unable to digest the matter, she vomits a trail of black, spiny fluid and then leaves in a hurry as Needy calls after her. The next morning at school, Jennifer appears fine and shrugs off Needy's concerns. While the small town is devastated by the deaths caused by the fire, Jennifer seduces the school's football captain in the woods and then attacks him; his disemboweled corpse is later found.
Meanwhile, the members of Low Shoulder gain popularity due to their rumored heroism during the fire and offer to make a charity appearance at the school's spring formal. While Needy and her boyfriend, Chip Johnny Simmons have sex, Needy senses something dreadful has happened.
She leaves in a panic and almost runs over Jennifer, drenched in blood. She rushes home and finds Jennifer in her bedroom. Jennifer kisses her, initiating a brief makeout session, and soon explains what happened after the fire: Low Shoulder took her into the woods and offered her as a virgin sacrifice to Satan in exchange for fame and fortune.
Although the sacrifice and greedy exchange were a success, Jennifer was in fact not a virgin, and when the lead singer Nikolai Adam Brody murdered her, the ritual backfired and a demonic spirit took over her body. In that context, if Fox was going to star in a movie, it only stood to reason that the movie would be a male sex fantasy. The men here — including a post- The OC Adam Brody and a pre- Parks and Recreation Chris Pratt — are mostly just bodies to be disposed of and are either entirely unthreatening or simultaneously threatening and pathetic.
But the framing Kusama and Cody tried to offer the movie — as something that sought to be fun but was also harder and more complex than that — was by and large pushed aside.
This was supposed to be a movie for men. So where were the men? Where was the sexy posing? Where was the smut and the fun? And eventually, Jennifer tells us what really happened to her: The band drove her into the woods, tied her up, and sacrificed her to Satan in a bid for fame and fortune.
In a post- MeToo world, the implications of this storyline look uncomfortably familiar. They start to laugh. Then they start stabbing her to death. And that revenge fantasy is grounded in the emotional truth of the toxic, codependent, profoundly meaningful friendship between Needy and Jennifer.
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