Anita "Needy" Lesnicki, once an insecure and studious teenager living in the small town of Devil's Kettle, Minnesota, is now a violent asylum inmate who narrates the story as a flashback while in solitary confinement.

Meanwhile, Low Shoulder gains popularity due to their falsely rumored heroism during the fire, and offer to make a charity appearance at the school's spring formal.

Jennifer reveals that Low Shoulder had taken her into the woods after the bar fire and offered her as a virgin ultimate sacrifice to Satan in exchange for fame and fortune.

[12] I remember cracking open my father's laser disk of Nightmare on Elm Street and having the coolest movie moments of my childhood and I can't imagine having that experience with any other genre.

[22] Speaking of the scene's media hype, she said that "if the two protagonists of the film were a guy and a girl and in a particularly tense moment, they shared a kiss, no one would say it was gratuitous" but "the fact that they're women means it's some kind of stunt".

"[24] In February 2008, Amanda Seyfried was cast as Anita "Needy" Lesnicki, the "plain Jane" best friend to Fox's character for whom she harbors a somewhat homoerotic infatuation.

"[26] The filmmakers had hoped to cast an actual rock musician to portray Nikolai Wolf, with Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy and Joel Madden of Good Charlotte being their top choices.

"[24] For the "vomit scene" where Jennifer has just arrived at Needy's house after being murdered and inhabited by a demon, Fox said the liquid she was given to spit out "was actually ... chocolate syrup initially".

Erik Nordby of KNB (known for his work on The Haunting in Connecticut, which also features co-star Kyle Gallner) stated, "We immediately went into pitch mode in January and spent a solid two weeks trying to not only bid the script but also collect as much reference material and stuff for the first client get together.

"There was a lot of info yet to come, but based on the script, Jennifer goes from very beautiful Megan Fox to a very ghoulish, succubus creature whose jaw distends half-way down her face."

"He grabbed chunks of that river and tialing it so that it had a nice stretch of birds' eye point of view of the water that existed on the location in the lighting situation we were trying to match", stated Nordby.

"And then he projected that onto a whirlpool of animated sprites and had similar enough texture to the actual water that existed there, but pulled control into lighting it and could add depth mainly to the center of it."

The website's critical consensus states, "Jennifer's Body features occasionally clever dialogue but the horror/comic premise fails to be either funny or scary enough to satisfy.

[38] Tom Charity of CNN said "[the] last time a horror flick tried for a distinctly female point of view the result was Twilight, which was more of a wan gothic romance than a chiller" and "Fox makes a convincing vixen, callously picking up victims whenever her luster begins to fade.

[39] Mary Pols of Time magazine called the film entertaining and reasoned "[t]here is a lot of intelligent camp here, and some sharply observed characterizations" and Cody and Kusama's "depiction of the ways in which women like Needy are willing to compromise themselves to indulge an ultimately less secure friend is spot-on".

[40] Dana Stevens of Slate praised the film for being "luscious and powerful, sexy and scary, maddening at times, but impossible to stop watching" and a "wicked black comedy with unexpected emotional resonance, one of the most purely pleasurable movies of the year so far".

[7] Elle's Karen Durbin said the film not only puts "a fresh spin on female-centric pop genres but also own[s] them outright" and is "rich with first-rate performances".

[42] Nick Pinkerton of Sci Fi Weekly called Fox and Seyfried's kissing scene "the best close-up girl-girl liplock" since Cruel Intentions (1999),[21] and A. O. Scott of The New York Times concluded "the movie deserves—and is likely to win—a devoted cult following, despite its flaws" and that "[these flaws] are mitigated by a sensibility that mixes playful pop-culture ingenuity with a healthy shot of feminist anger".

[9] Giving a partially negative review of the film was Joshua Rothkopf of Time Out New York, who said the "movie has a centerfold sheen to it—and some lesbianic soft-core flirtation to match—as its plot dives deeply into Twilight-esque heavy-melo meltdown in the last act" and that "Cody throws one too many losses at Needy; the screenwriter loses her satiric way about halfway through.

[43] Ann Hornaday of The Washington Post said, "There's a certain kooky, kinky fun to be had with Jennifer's Body" but that "[a]dmittedly, this is the stuff of lurid adolescent distraction, not great cinema" and "is strictly a niche item but provides a goofy, campy bookend to Drag Me to Hell (2009) on the B-movie shelf.

[44] San Francisco Chronicle's Peter Hartlaub stated, "Enjoy the film for its witty dialogue and fun performances, but know that there isn't a single good scare.

"[8] Hartlaub felt the film is not bad, is "almost always pleasing" and that Fox "proves that she has some [acting] range" but "the chances that it will be somebody else's pop culture reference 27 years from now are slim to none".

[8] Joe Neumaier of New York Daily News said, "Fox merely needs to look either vacant or evil, which the Transformers boy-toy does spookily well" but "[w]ords and story are still the lifeblood of a movie, and Jennifer's Body is filled like a Twinkie with half-fleshed-out ideas".

[52] She stated that after the MeToo movement highlighted routine sexual harassment and misconduct in the media industry, the film's story of "a group of powerful men sacrificing a girl's body on the altar of their own professional advancement" became "uncomfortably familiar".

"[53] In a 2022 essay on its status as a classic queer and bisexual film, Carmen Maria Machado wrote that Jennifer's Body speaks to "what it means to experience parallel sexualities with your best friend as you punch through the last vestiges of childhood."

Machado rejects accusations that the film is guilty of queerbaiting, considering it instead an effective depiction of the "central body of water that is bisexuality" which many queer people spend at least some of their life in.

"[60] In addition, he labeled the Scream franchise as more "straight-up horror" than comedy and stated Zombieland's box office performance would determine the horror-comedy genre's current viability.

"[62] He named the second reason as the marketing, stating that the film was not well-marketed (whether by billboards, transit posters, lobby standees, or other promotional venues), even in New York City.

It focuses heavily on following her soon-to-be victims and provides information on their personalities not elaborated on in the film so that readers can better conclude whether the boys deserved to be murdered.

[72] On creating the story, Spears stated, "The best part for me as a writer was to show some events from the movie from a different point of view, sort of like Rashomon for you Kurosawa fans.