The first time I saw Jennifer’s Body, I hated it.

That sentence is a lie, but so was much of my thought process at the time.

It was 2009 and I was 23. Diablo Cody’s Juno had been the big hit of 2007 and her follow up, Jennifer’s Body, promised more of the unique voice that brought us dialogue like “This is one doodle that can’t be undid, home skillet.”

Trailers for Jennifer’s Body salaciously showed out-of-context clips of then it-girl, Megan Fox kissing Amanda Seyfried, but that’s not why I wanted to see the movie. Not at all. Nope. Not me. Not a nice Jewish girl from the suburbs who was most assuredly straight. Very straight.

The most straight.

I don’t remember the conversation that led my parents and I to renting Jennifer’s Body though I’m sure it had much to do with our mutual enjoyment of Juno. I also remember the pure terror in my chest for the film’s entire run-time.

I’m lucky to have supportive, understanding parents. My story is not all butterflies and rainbows, but the horror of my queerness did not lie in the idea of my parents disowning me or worse. I acknowledge how lucky I am in that way.

But at 23, I was terrified of the mere possibility that I could be anything other than “normal.” To the point that I had pushed myself so far into the closet that I was barely aware I was in it.

Watching Jennifer’s Body brought forward a familiar internal terror that I could not name. I was so scared that if I reacted, if my face shifted even slightly, I’d give away the secret I was too scared to acknowledge to even myself.

Over a decade late, proudly out and newly in possession of a second-hand copy of Jennifer’s Body on blu ray, I decided to give the movie another chance.

It was like looking my monster in the face, only this time I was happy to see her staring back at me.

Jennifer’s Body is the story of two high school best friends, Needy (Seyfriend) and Jennifer (Fox). Needy is nerdy, bespectacled, and living her best high school life: she’s not bullied for her dorkie appearance, her best friend is the Prom Queen, and she has the cutest, gentlest, most non-threatening boyfriend to exist since Michael Cena’s Paulie Bleeker in Juno.

The boyfriend, Chip Dove (Johnny Simmons), is the perfect construction of a high-school beard. If 16-year-old me was asked to describe my perfect man, I would have described Chip Dove. And Chip provides Needy the safe, heteronormative structure that keeps her away from the much more tantalizing and threatening orbit of Jennifer.

Jennifer would have scared closeted me and not just because of her demonic possession. Beautiful and sexual, Jennifer offers a glimpse into a world that’s forbidden. Needy’s obvious attraction and loyalty to Jennifer clashes with her annoyance and, later, fear of her former best friend. It is a juxtaposition reminiscent of the characters in Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s 1872 novella Carmilla and it’s no wonder. Jennifer’s Body, much like Carmilla, is the story of a queer vampire preying on youth.

Carmilla is one of the original “predatory lesbian” stories that inspired a harmful trope in media about queer women. The idea that a lesbian could be hiding amongst heterosexual ladies, that she could lure and seduce an innocent straight woman, that this seduction could lead to ruin and death, left its mark on fiction until very recently (lesbians, we walk amongst you).

But Jennifer’s Body plays with these notions and Needy reacts to Jennifer in much the same way that Laura, her 1872 counterpart, reacts to Carmilla’s presence. Laura struggles with her feelings in the novella as she explains, “…I was conscious of a love growing into adoration, and also of abhorrence.” In Carmilla’s presence, Laura experiences “a strange tumultuous excitement that was pleasurable, ever and anon, mingled with a vague sense of fear and disgust.”.

And this is how Needy interacts with Jennifer too. She is dazzled by her best friend to the point that Chip complains about all the time they spend together. But Needy is also repulsed by Jennifer whose demonic possession leads to her feeding on young men. Their relationship is toxic and co-dependent, and sad because they are both drawn to each other, but simultaneously despise each other for perceived failings and weaknesses.

Needy and Jennifer are Gothic doubles. Needy is the proper, heteronormative, virginal woman while Jennifer is the dangerous, homosexual, lurking in the shadows. Jennifer is the part of Needy that Needy fears most and Needy is the part of Jennifer that Jennifer most desires but cannot have.

When I watched the movie the first time, I saw myself in Needy. I sensed her pull to Jennifer alongside her revulsion and I must have subconsciously recognized my own feelings about what was going on inside my head. I was so afraid that I could be anything other than straight, that I barely allowed myself to think about it. “What if I’m gay” was too dangerous, it was too terrifying.

Jennifer’s omnipresence in the film, her ability to intrude on Needy’s bedroom or in the trees behind Chip’s house felt like a direct link to my own fears. I don’t want to think about being gay, I don’t want to acknowledge that I’m even having the thought, but the thought will not go away. I saw Jennifer as predatory. I saw only her evil and her danger because I was not ready to look at the part of me that was Jennifer.

Like Lucy stalking young children in Dracula, Jennifer represented an inversion of her “natural” role in the world. Lucy preys on kids because it’s an inversion of the nurturing motherly role that women of the time were expected to fulfill. Jennifer preys on young men because it’s an inversion of the more subservient, heterosexual expectations placed upon her by society.

Years removed from the scared closeted person I was, I can recognize that Jennifer is not as monstrous as I had feared. I welcome the Jennifer part of me. There is no stalking or predatory behaviours. There is only a world of opportunity and colour. If Jennifer was at one time the ghost of my potential queerness, she is now a welcome companion. There is nothing unnatural about me. There is nothing dangerous in my queerness either. And while Jennifer and Needy face terrible fates, it is perhaps their denial of self and the constraints of a hateful society that drove them to doom.

It’s okay to be Needy. And it’s okay to let Jennifer in too.

While I don’t condone murder and try to avoid demonic possession when I can, I’m glad that Jennifer’s Body is no longer the scariest movie I’ve ever seen.

I’m glad that the Jennifer part of me no longer lives in the shadows.