Amanda Seyfried has criticised the marketing team working on 2009’s Jennifer’s Body for “cheapening” the movie and advertising it like a “gory romp”.
The horror-comedy starred Seyfried as Anita ‘Needy’ Lesnicki, a nerdy character whose best friend Jennifer (Megan Fox) becomes possessed by a demon and starts eating boys at their school.
The film received poor reviews when it was first released, but has since been embraced as a misunderstood triumph and garnered a cult following.
In a recent GQ video, Seyfried looked back on her role in the film, and discussed the misleading marketing campaign, which was targeted to male audiences with sexualised images of Fox, when it was a film about female friendship.
“If the critics criticise anything, it would be the marketing. The marketing sucked. It just did. And we all agree,” said Seyfried.
She said that the film’s director Karyn Kusama is a “fierce advocate of women in storytelling”.
“She is able to enhance the relationships between women on film and TV. She put it together so beautifully, and the marketing team cheapened it like it was just a romp, a gory romp. I think they ruined it.”
Seyfried went on to further praise the film, singling out its special effects and stunts.
“The special effects were so incredible, there were stunts, there was like everything that you could want. and girl-on-girl action,” she said. “We were expressing a certain angst in a very, very specific comedic way.”
In 2023, Adam Brody, who played Nikolai Wolf in the film, told The Independent that the film’s criticism turned him into a “punching bag”.
“It definitely was derided at the time and that felt a little unwarranted because I saw it early and I was like, this movie is great,” Brody recalled. “I was really happy with it and pleasantly surprised. I thought it’d be good and I liked it more than I thought, even.
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“To have it have such tepid reviews and box office, et cetera, and in a way to be a punching bag, felt s****y. It wasn’t my movie so I didn’t take the brunt of it but still it felt a little unjust,” he continued. “It’s been lovely to have it take its place in the pantheon of horror-comedy, heavily metaphorical movies.”
Speaking further about the marketing, Brody said it was aimed at people who like Transformers, but he was unsure of how different marketing would have changed the film’s overall reception.
“It was directed by a woman, starring two women written by that year’s screenwriting Oscar winner and they’re like, bury all of that. Don’t tell anyone that. It’s irrelevant that Diablo Cody just won an Oscar and she wrote this,” he said.
“We don’t want anyone to know; this is for people who like Transformers. And look, I don’t know how much it would have changed if it had hipper marketing. Probably a little.”
Seyfried has said that she has already given her thumbs up to a potential sequel.
“I think that Karyn and Diablo were a really good team. And Megan and I are a really good team. I’m looking forward to the sequel,” she said. “They’re working on it. I already said thumbs up. I was like, ‘Whenever you’re ready, I’m ready,’” she said.
