Main Page

Jennifer's Body is a 2009 American supernatural horror dark comedy film written by Diablo Cody and directed by Karyn Kusama. The film stars Megan Fox, Amanda Seyfried, Johnny Simmons, and Adam Brody. Fox portrays a demonically possessed high school girl who kills her male classmates, with her best friend striving to stop her. The film premiered at the 2009 Toronto International Film Festival[3] and was released in the United States and Canada on September 18, 2009.[4] The title is a reference to the song of the same name by alternative rock band Hole on their album Live Through This. As a tie-in to the film, Boom! Studios produced a Jennifer's Body graphic novel, released in August 2009.
Working with Cody again following their collaborative efforts on the film Juno, Jason Reitman stated he and his producers "want to make unusual films".[5] Cody said she wanted the film to speak to female empowerment and explore the complex relationships between best friends.[6]
The film had a lackluster performance at the North American box office, making $2.8 million its opening day and $6.8 million its opening weekend,[2][7] and received mixed reviews from critics; whereas negative reviews criticized the narrative and, specifically, the horror/comic premise for "fail[ing] to be either funny or scary enough to satisfy", positive reviews praised the film for its dialogue, Megan Fox's and supporting performances, and emotional resonance.[8][9][10][11] Since 2018, in the wake of the #MeToo movement, the film has been appreciated as a feminist horror film.
Plot
Anita "Needy" Lesnicki, once an insecure and bookish teenager living near Devil's Kettle, Minnesota, is now a violent mental inmate who narrates the story as a flashback while in solitary confinement. Since childhood, she had been friends with a selfish and popular cheerleader, Jennifer Check, despite having little in common. 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 people. In shock, Jennifer agrees to leave with the band, despite Needy's protests. Later that evening, Jennifer, covered in blood, appears in Needy's kitchen and attempts to eat food from the refrigerator. She immediately vomits a trail of black, spiny fluid and leaves in a hurry.
The next morning at school, Jennifer appears fine and dismisses Needy's concerns. While the town is devastated by the deaths caused by the fire, Jennifer seduces the school's football captain in the woods and disembowels him. 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.
A month later, Jennifer has become pale. She accepts a date with school goth/emo Colin, whom she brutally kills. While Needy and her boyfriend Chip have sex, Needy senses something dreadful has happened. She leaves in a panic and almost runs over Jennifer, who is drenched in blood. At home, she again encounters Jennifer, who explains that Low Shoulder had taken her into the woods after the bar fire and offered her as a virgin sacrifice to Satan in exchange for fame and fortune. Although the sacrifice and demonic exchange were a success, Jennifer was not actually a virgin, so she became permanently possessed. Leaving the woods, Jennifer had encountered an exchange student leaving the scene of the fire and made him her first victim. Jennifer states that when she has eaten, she can withstand virtually any injury without pain, healing instantly.
The following day, Needy goes to the school library's occult section and determines that Jennifer is a succubus who must feed on flesh and can only be killed while she is hungry and weak. Needy tells Chip about her discoveries and warns him not to attend the school dance. He does not believe her, so she breaks up with him in order to protect him. Chip attempts to attend the dance anyway but is intercepted by Jennifer, who takes him to an abandoned pool house and begins feeding on him. Needy arrives there and fights Jennifer. Chip impales Jennifer through the stomach with a pool skimmer, but Jennifer removes it and escapes, while Chip dies.
Needy goes to Jennifer's home and breaks into her bedroom. She fights Jennifer and stabs her in the heart with a utility knife, killing her and destroying the demon. Jennifer's mother enters and finds Needy on top of her daughter's body. Soon after, Needy is brought to an asylum. In her asylum room, she manifests some of Jennifer's supernatural powers, such as super strength and the ability to levitate due to a non-fatal bite from Jennifer during the fight between them. She escapes the mental facility, hitchhikes a ride to the hotel where Low Shoulder are staying, and murders them.
Cast
Megan Fox as Jennifer Check:
Fox was in negotiations to star as Jennifer Check since the film was announced in 2007, and was officially cast in October 2007.[12] Fox said the reason she agreed to the role was her love for the script. "I think what I loved about the movie is it's so unapologetic and how completely inappropriate it is at all times," she said. "That was my favorite part about the script and about the character. It's fun to be able to say the shit that she got to say and get away with it and how people find it charming."[13] Asked how acting in a film like this is different from acting in Transformers, Fox said "there's [no] distractions, like there's no robots to distract you from whatever performance I do give. So, if it's terrible, you're gonna fucking know that it's really terrible".[13] She said despite this aspect of the business being intimidating, she enjoyed portraying the character. "I wasn't really sure what I was doing," said Fox. "I was just trying to have fun with it and I felt like I was able to make fun of my own image as to how some people might perceive Megan Fox to be. I was just sort of flying freely and I hope some of it works."[13] To prepare for her role as a living-dead teenager, Fox dropped to a near-frail 97 pounds and stayed out of the sun to keep her skin pale. In balancing out the film's horror with humor, she said she relied heavily on Diablo Cody's script and Karyn Kusama's direction to pull it off, stating, "I have a very specific sense of humor, things that I think are funny aren't going to fly with middle America. It's going to eliminate some of the audience, so you need someone there to tell you you can't do that."[14]
Amanda Seyfried as Anita "Needy" Lesnicki:
In February 2008, Seyfried was cast as Anita "Needy" Lesnicki, the "plain Jane" best friend to Fox's character with whom she shares a somewhat lesbian infatuation.[15][16] Seyfried said it was a relief to play the nerdy character opposite Fox. "Being a lead (like Megan), you have that weird pressure of feeling like you have to look attractive," she stated. "In this movie, I didn't worry about any of that [shit]. I eventually was very depressed that I couldn't get the role though, cause Megan is all hot but I am not."[17]
Johnny Simmons as Chip Dove
J. K. Simmons as Mr. Wroblewski
Amy Sedaris as Toni Lesnicki
Adam Brody as Nikolai Wolf:
Chud.com reported that the filmmakers were looking at actual rock band members Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy and Joel Madden of Good Charlotte to portray male lead Nikolai Wolf. Chad Michael Murray was also considered for the role.[18] In March 2008, Johnny Simmons was reportedly cast as Nikolai.[19] However, Brody was officially cast in the role of Nikolai, while Simmons was then given the role of Chip Dove. Brody said he did not do his own vocals, adding, "My singing voice is still going through puberty. They gave me a singing lesson or two, and it's not the worst thing in the world, but it's not anything anyone would choose to hear."[20] His vocals were provided by Ryan Levine, who also played another member of the band.
Kyle Gallner as Colin Gray
Cynthia Stevenson as Mrs. Dove
Chris Pratt as Officer Roman Duda
Carrie Genzel as Mrs. Check
Juan Riedinger as Dirk
Juno Ruddell as Officer Warzak
Valerie Tian as Chasity
Aman Johal as Ahmet from India
Josh Emerson as Jonas Kozelle
Lance Henriksen as the driver near the end of film
Production
Development
Jennifer's Body is the follow-up to writer and producer Diablo Cody's and Jason Reitman's collaboration efforts on Juno. In October 2007, Fox Atomic pre-emptively purchased the rights to Cody's script with Megan Fox to star. Peter Rice, who at the time oversaw Fox Searchlight and Fox Atomic, brought in the project as Fox Searchlight had previously distributed Cody's film Juno.[21] Mason Novick and Reitman's producing partner Dan Dubiecki signed as producers in November 2007 with plans to produce the film under Hard C, which is housed at Fox Searchlight. Reitman commented, "We want to make unusual films, and anything that turns a genre on its ear interests Dan and I."[5] Karyn Kusama was announced as director in January 2008.[22] Kusama said she signed on to the project because of the script. "I was blessed to read this script at a moment where the producers were meeting with directors and it just knocked me out. It was just so original, so imaginative", she stated. "That's what it is about this script and the world is that it feels like a fairy tale gone psycho and I think that's what most fairy tales actually started as."[13] Additionally, Cody, Reitman and Kusama knew the film would be R rated because of the language.[13]

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. I can't imagine dangerously opening a broad comedy in the middle of the night hoping I wouldn't get caught. I have an idea there's a kid out there who will be secretly opening up a Blu-ray of Jennifer's Body and I think it's pretty exciting to all of us.
—Jason Reitman[13]

In February 2008, a cease and desist was given to a writer at CC2K.us after they posted an advance script review for the film.[23] The Latino Review also posted an advance review.[24] At the time CC2K.us received their cease and desist order, questions were raised why Latino Review's largely positive script review was allowed to stay posted while CC2K was being forced by Fox Searchlight to remove their mainly negative coverage.[25] Although Latino Review was later asked to remove their review, numerous other websites and blogs published their own critiques of the script.[26][27][28]
Cody stated that when writing the script, she was "simultaneously trying to pay tribute to some of the conventions that we've already seen in horror, yet, at the same time, kind of turn them on their ear".[13] One of her influences from the 1980s horror genre was the film The Lost Boys. She wanted to "honor that, and at the same time, [she] had never really seen this particular subgenre done with girls and [she] tried to do a little of both".[13] Despite this, she said she had noticed that "the last survivor standing in the typical horror film is a woman" and that because of this she feels "horror has always had kind of a feminist angle to it in a weird way and, at the same time, it's kind of delightfully exploitative". Jennifer's Body could play on both of these aspects.[13]
Cody said she wanted the film to speak to female empowerment and explore the complex relationships between best friends.[6] "(Director) Karyn Kusama and I are both outspoken feminists", she said. "We wanted to subvert the classic horror model of women being terrorized. I want to write roles that service women. I want to tell stories from a female perspective. I want to create good parts for actresses where they're not just accessories to men."[6] Addressing "the male-dominated" horror genre, Cody said "a key reason for writing the film was to bring to the screen a new way of expressing the intensity of female bonds" and that the adolescent female friendships she experienced were unparalleled in their intensity. She wanted to show the "almost horrific" aspect of such devotion and its relation to parasitism.[6]
The producers decided to have the film open with the statement "Hell is a teenage girl" to reflect the "horrors" of puberty and that "the hellish emotions felt during high school often reappear as teenage girls mature into young women".[6] Cody stated:
There's the scene where Jennifer's sitting alone smearing makeup on her face. I always thought that was such a sad image. She's so vulnerable. I don't know any woman who hasn't had a moment sitting in front of the mirror and thinking, 'Help me, I want to be somebody else.' What makes it extra affecting is that [Megan Fox] is stunning.[6]
Cody crafted the story to follow a night that ends in a tragic fire, after which Jennifer is kidnapped and set up as a sacrifice which goes awry. Jennifer, now possessed by a demon and subsequently altered into a succubus, sets out on a bloody rampage in which she devours boys, and it is up to Needy to stop her. In sort of a reversal aspect of how puberty changes a girl's life, Jennifer must consume the blood of others once a month or she becomes weak and plain-looking.[29] "It's a meek shall inherit the Earth sort of thing. I think it's always really satisfying and cathartic to see a character that was previously bullied become super human", said Cody.[6] Cody said the script is not a reflection of any part of her own life, but that she is more like character Needy. "I would say I was more of a Needy than a Jennifer. I was never an Alpha female, and I've never gotten off with bullying other people", she said. "If I had to choose, I was definitely the one being shoved, not the one shoving."[6]
The nickname "Needy" was given to Seyfried's character to underline the essentially condescending dynamic in Jennifer and Needy's high school relationship,[30] as Needy often admires Jennifer and feels she needs her. Cody said "Jennifer is a product of a culture that pressures girls to be skinny, beautiful and just like movie stars" and that she "hopes the film inspires girls to take life into their own hands and do with it, what they want".[6] "If I had gone to this movie as a teenage girl, I would've come out of it feeling totally inspired", she stated. "I would've wanted to write, I would've wanted to create and I would've felt like I watched something that was speaking to me."[6]
Assigned to direct the film, Kusama said, "I think also a lot of horror is about femaleness – whether it's Carrie or Rosemary's Baby."[13] She said she feels "like there's a lot of fear of the female or kind of celebration of it in some weird way and something about this movie managed to take the fear and the sense that it's the female that ultimately survives and sort of marry that in a really interesting way".[13]
Addressing her decision to have Jennifer and Needy be romantically intimate at one point during the film, which takes place in the form of a long and passionate kissing scene, Cody said she did not write the scene to score publicity.[16] 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". The scene was "intended to be something profound and meaningful" to her and Kusama.[16] She further stated:
Obviously we knew people were going to totally sensationalize it. They're beautiful girls, the scene is hot—I'm not afraid to say that. There is a sexual energy between the girls which is kind of authentic, because I know when I was a teen-aged girl, the friendships that I had with other girls were almost romantic, they were so intense. I wanted to sleep at my friend's house every night, I wanted to wear her clothes, we would talk on the phone until our ears ached. I wanted to capture that heightened feeling you get as an adolescent that you don't really feel as a grownup. (laughs) You like [your] friends when you're a grownup, but you don't need to sleep in the same bed with them and talk to them on the phone until 5 a.m. every night.[16]
Though the film is part comedy, Cody initially intended for it to be a "very dark, very brooding" traditional slasher film. Close to "a third of the way into the process" she felt that she was incapable of doing so because "the humor just kept sneaking in". She stated, "I have a macabre sense of humor. A lot of the things in the movie that are horrifying are funny to me." Feeling that "comedy films and horror films are kind of similar" due to being films where you can significantly gauge intense reactions from the audience, Cody stated, "They're laughing, they're screaming, it's not a passive experience. So, I actually think comedy and horror are kind of similar in that way."[13]
Design and effects

Handling the film's special effects were KNB EFX GROUP and the Moving Picture Company (MPC). For Jennifer's demonic form, the creators used different techniques. "I actually wasn't in [the makeup chair] that much because they created an entire head. They did a live cast of me from the shoulders up. They created me and then put the teeth in", stated Fox. "To save my face, they had a photo double that would come in and do most of the crazy monster makeup - they would do that on her. So it would go from me, then in post-production it would somehow go to her and the fake head. They would mix them all together."[14]
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".[13] "We did a few takes where I would just do this scream and sort of puke Hershey's chocolate syrup. Scratch the Hershey's because I don't want to endorse that or anything", she stated. "And then, special effects did a rig that clamps onto my ear and you revisit it in the pool scene ..." Fox said it "clips on. It goes around the back of my ear and then I bite down on it on the side of my face, like this, and it projectiles. It's a tube ..."[13]
Directing the scene, Kusama said it had a classic feel. Fox agreed, "Yeah, and it projects whatever that material was. I'm not sure. It was pretty intense. I think it was worse for [Seyfried] because she's the one that got puked on. I was the one doing the puking."[13]
For more practical special effects on the set as opposed to CG, Kusama said it "was a choice that we all sort of made organically". She said they appreciate "those kind of effects in older movies and [questions] sometimes how much more effective it is to use a ton of CG" and that they "always started with a practical effect and then moved forward from there to lay a groundwork of something that's actually physically, materially there". They found this to be more enjoyable.[13]

Before we started shooting, it involved the full appliance attached to [Fox's] face and then her real jaw would be greened essentially inside of her mouth and then the appliance would drop below her real jaw and then visual effects essentially owned everything in her mouth and everything outside would've been a special effects appliance. And then there would've been a lot of clean up as well because of the way it attached to her face.
—Erik Nordby on the construction of Jennifer's demonic mouth and jaw[32]

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."[32] He said the director and producers wanted an "old-school, hands-off, lo-fi approach to the visual effects" so that the horror elements would not overpower the storyline.[32] Based on the script, MPC similarly came to the same conclusion and "provided a clear direction" for Nordby and his team. "At that point when we met with them, they had already met with KNB, who had already done up a stylized still of what, at the time, they were calling 'Evil Jennifer,'" he said. "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." Nordby said the look was eventually toned down at the wishes of MPC. From there, KNB "produced some tests, grabbing a bunch of stills from [Fox] and [did their] work to indicate how that balance could exist between special effects and visual effects and still maintain a level of subtlety" and that "[MPC] responded really well".[32]
The teams wanted to "maintain some sort of the Megan Fox allure" but said that it was "incredibly difficult because as soon as [they] warped her face in any direction, the shine kind of came off it". To combat this, they ended up focusing on anything below her nose, where they had the freedom to make things "as horrific as [they] needed to" and then above her nose, "[they] could manipulate it somewhat with warps and color correction in her eye sockets. So even at her worst, she had some of that sexiness throughout".[32]
Nordby said most of the attention was devoted to Jennifer's face and that "very quickly in combination" with special effects and makeup, MPC thought up a five-station system for what Jennifer goes through. Nordby stated:
Stage one is beautiful Jennifer and then two and three were strictly makeup where her eyes become more recessed and she would start to look plain like the rest of us. And stage four was some custom dentures that KNB made for her, and then visual effects in stage four was mainly facial warping and recessing her eyes some more and having a pinning effect to her irises and a variety of other musculature deforms, just bringing her cheek bones down more. And stage five was the full on, as crazy as it gets, which you don't really see until near the end.[32]
During testing, Nordby and the special effects teams realized that getting Fox in and out of the appliance used to create Jennifer's murderous jaw would be too time-consuming. To remedy this, they hired a photo double. "[E]very day (for about 10 days) she would sit in a chair with this full appliance on her and we would shoot this jaw, and then all [Fox] would have to do is the dentures", stated Nordby. He said that "when it came time to shoot any of these jaw moments, [Fox] would act out in rehearsal how she was going to attack her victim and [they would] fine tune that blocking so it was relatively locked".[32] The camera accompanied them in the same way, as "it would roll and she would put her dentures in, and they would really distort her face" in a way that would produce a satisfying and nice side effect. Additionally, the team would have Fox wear contact lenses and go through exactly the same motions as normal Jennifer. "But then I would shoot all the key poses that existed in whatever moves the digital double was doing, so that we had as much of that appliance in that lighting condition that we could get", said Nordby. "KNB also created a hairless but high detailed head of the stage five Jennifer that had an articulating jaw."[32]

Nordby spent a significant amount of time shooting "the articulating jaw" scene because they had "ultimate control over how the light was hitting the head". He said, "This so-called jaw shot became a pivotal point, because for four months of the post, the filmmakers thought the film was getting too scary so MPC pulled back on the jaw and then they thought it wasn't scary enough."[32] Because of this, "they pushed back and this jaw went back and forth quite a bit to help navigate where they wanted the tone on any given day". These different poses helped the two teams perfect the jaw scenes. "From a marketing point of view, from all the test screenings they did", said Norby, "there was a lot of work figuring out how to make this a scary film as well as a funny film."[32] Since the team was on a small budget, they "relied more on skilled artists to think through shots rather than a brute force approach".[32]
MPC additionally worked on the disappearing waterfall that serves as Jennifer's grave when she is killed at the beginning of the film. They transformed the mysterious waterfall into a whirlpool. "We came up with an approach that we thought would work because we had a lot of confidence in our water sims", stated Nordby. "The waterfall appears both as a day and night shot, so we had to integrate with the water. And the night shots play a pivotal role in the film, and we do a huge crane over."[32] They could not lock it to a pan or to a tilt and filming the shots was difficult due to the actual base of the waterfall being out of reach. Nordby said, "I eventually lowered down a shot—a ton of reference of the area because I knew we'd have to do some digi-matte work to recreate the basin that the whirlpool ends up in." They soon realized that there was an insufficient amount of churning and foam to read as real as the location. The CG Supervisor, Pete Dionne, presented a different idea. "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." Dealing with "very shallow" water, the team had to take extra care when filming the scenes.[32]
During the film's fire scene, Cody appears as a character in the barroom. "To me, I am afraid of fire and fire technics and all that stuff which is why I don't know why I asked to be in the bar scene because I've never exploded before", she said. She had asked to be set on fire. "That was me trying to conquer a fear. By the way, they would not allow me to do a full burn for insurance purposes, even though I argued that Burt Reynolds had done it once", stated Cody. "But apparently he got really hurt, so they would not let me. To me, there's nothing more horrifying than being stuck in a claustrophobic space as it is burning down so, to me, it was more like tapping into a personal fear. That's not tough."[13]
Filming
In late 2007, Fox Atomic had plans to film Jennifer's Body before a possible writer's strike. When the Writers Guild of America strike began, shooting was then moved to March 7, 2008, in Burnaby, British Columbia, specifically at Robert Burnaby Park near Cariboo Hill Secondary School. Some of the scenes, particularly those situated in a school setting, were filmed in local Vancouver-area schools such as Vancouver Technical Secondary School, Langley Secondary School and University Hill Secondary School.
Fox said that while filming her highly anticipated kissing scene with Seyfried that Seyfried was "extremely uncomfortable" but that she herself was not. "I feel much safer with girls, so I felt more comfortable kissing [Seyfried] than kissing any of the other people that I had to kiss", she said.[33] Seyfried's uneasiness in the scene caused "giggling fits" between takes.[33] Seyfried said that neither of them wanted to do the kiss because they felt it was just for promotional purposes.[17] She agreed with Fox that she was uneasy about acting out the scene. "It was my first time doing a real kissing scene with a woman", she stated. "It is just weird. It is a woman. With a woman's smell—soft and floraly—and maybe the pheromones are different. Something about it felt uncomfortable for me."[34]
Music
Music was incorporated as an essential part of the film; there are "very specific bands" placed in band posters in some parts, such as in the selection of the band poster on the walls of the bar.[13] Kusama said "[t]he music was a huge component of the movie" and this is first evident with "the songs that we see and hear performed, but then, just the vibe of the movie actually". She said, "As the movie progresses, it becomes a pretty clearly music-oriented movie. It's sort of a youth movie. Some of those bands were totally made up and some of them are not."[13]
Release
Critical response

At the time of release
The review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes reports that 43% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 177 reviews and a rating average of 5.1/10. 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".[8] At Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average rating to reviews from mainstream critics, the film holds a score of 47 based on 29 reviews out of 100, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[35] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film a C- grade on a scale of A to F.[36]
Film critic Roger Ebert enjoyed the film, dubbing it a "Twilight for boys" and saying "as a movie about a flesh-eating cheerleader, it's better than it has to be". Ebert said that within Cody there is "the soul of an artist, and her screenplay brings to this material a certain edge, a kind of gleeful relish, that's uncompromising. This isn't your assembly-line teen horror thriller". Additionally, he complimented Fox as "[coming] through" in her portrayal and "play[ing] the role straight". He gave the film three out of four stars.[37] Rick Groen of The Globe and Mail gave the film three out of four stars.[38] Peter Travers of Rolling Stone stated it is "Hot! Hot! Hot!" and that "Director Karyn Kusama is torn between duty to female empowerment and slasher convention".[39] He credited Fox's portrayal as showing "a comic flair" that Transformers "never investigated".[39] 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. It's not hard to imagine she can have anyone who takes her fancy". Charity credited the dialogue as "bitingly smart, funny teen-speak ... along with sharp pop culture references".[40]
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".[41] 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".[9] 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]
The Miami Herald's Rene Rodriguez likened the film's "[effective exploitation] of the genre as a metaphor for adolescent angst, female sexuality and the strange, sometimes corrosive bonds between girls who claim to be best friends" to Brian De Palma's 1976 film Carrie.[43] She applauded the film for being fearless when delving into the subject of teen sex and for reversing the tradition/idea that only "bad girls have sex when they're 16 [and the] good ones—those who, like Needy, do their homework and are responsible—never slide past first base".[43] Nick Pinkerton of Sci Fi Weekly called Fox and Seyfried's lesbian kissing scene "the best close-up girl-girl liplock" since Cruel Intentions,[30] 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 "[these flaws] are mitigated by a sensibility that mixes playful pop-culture ingenuity with a healthy shot of feminist anger".[11]
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. But for a while, this has real fangs".[44] 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 on the B-movie shelf. Watch it, forget it, move on".[45] 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. An episode of Murder, She Wrote has more thrills."[10] 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".[10] 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".[46] Disagreeing with Fox's performance, Chicago Tribune's Michael Phillips called Fox "a pretty bad actress" who "doesn't seem to get Cody's sense of humor. At all".[47] He reasoned the "movie's partially redeemed by Seyfried, who makes her character more than a repository for audience sympathy" and "her make-out scene with Fox is handled with more suspense and care than anything else in the movie".[47]
Michael Sragow of Baltimore Sun described the only "perfect aspect" of Jennifer's Body as being its title. "No one is going to like this movie for its brain", he said.[48] Claudia Puig of USA Today stated of the film, "Jennifer's Body is not as hot as you hope it would be".[49] Where others praised the film's dialogue, MSNBC's Alonso Duralde called the writing lazy and "[w]orse still, all of Cody's trademark pop-culture–infused dialogue stands out as artificial and precious".[29] Jennifer's Body, he said, wants "so badly" to be a Heathers-esque dark comedy, "but its shortcomings makes you appreciate why that earlier film was so great".[29] Ty Burr of The Boston Globe also said the film wants to be like Heathers, and reminded him "a lot" of Heathers but the only scene in the film that "actually feels dangerous" is when the possessed Jennifer initiates a long and passionate kiss with Needy, which the film "very, very nervously backs away from" and that "Jennifer's Body falls into the dispiriting category of dumb movies made by smart people, in this case a glibly clever writer and a talented director who think a few wisecracks are enough to subvert the teen horror genre".[50]
Later assessments
In 2018, Constance Grady reported in Vox that a new critical consensus was forming that appreciated the film as a "forgotten feminist classic".[51] She noted 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, and that the scene of the band laughingly torturing Jennifer recalled Christine Blasey Ford's testimony of Brett Kavanaugh's alleged sexual assault on her. This, according to Grady, allowed viewers to see the film, rather than as a sex fantasy, as a revenge fantasy as Jennifer uses her abused body against her attackers.[51] Vox also attributed the film's initially poor reception to the reviewers' assumption that "a teen horror flick" was intended for a straight, male audience, and that if a film failed to meet that audience's expectations, it failed as a film – exemplified by ReelViews's assessment that "if you're in search for a way to ogle Megan Fox's body, there are a lot better ways to do it than subjecting yourself to this". Now, Grady wrote, this straight male gaze is no longer the default for film critics and a broader audience.[51]
Box office
Though the film was expected to pull in a significant number of the late teenage/young adult audience, particularly males aged 17 and older, while Cody hoped for a large female turnout,[6] it earned a "disappointing" $2.8million on its opening Friday and $6.8million its opening weekend at the North American box office; the film placed #5, while 3D animated film Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs placed #1 with $30.1million.[7][52][53] Produced for $16million, Jennifer's Body did manage to attract the sizable female audience Cody wanted; 51% were female, with 70% of patrons under age 25.[52] The film had been expected to benefit somewhat from its heavily marketed lesbian kissing scene between Fox and Seyfried, which, in addition to Fox being in the film, was thought to entice and successfully attract male viewers.[17][54] Critic Jim Vejvoda at IGN stated that such a scene is not as shocking as it was in past decades and cannot be expected to significantly pull in an audience.[54] The film grossed $16,204,793 domestically and $15,351,268 in international sales, for a worldwide total of $31,556,061.[2]
Box-office analysts and critics debated the film's underperformance. Analyst Jeff Bock, of Exhibitor Relations, reasoned the film underperformed at the box office due to two reasons; the first, he said, is the genre. Bock stated that Americans get horror and comedy, but with the idea "of those two things together in one place, people suddenly get very dumb".[55] "The horror-comedy genre is the toughest sell in Hollywood", he said. He noted films Tremors, Slither, Shaun of the Dead, Eight Legged Freaks and The Evil Dead series, and said that while many of those are considered critical and business successes, "none of them have brought in the megabucks that a simple horror or comedy can."[55] 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.[55]
Despite other R-rated horror films having centered around teenagers, some such as Scream having been successful, Bock said the second reason Jennifer's Body under-performed at the box office is the R-rating, which he described as a "killer" for the film. He said the film is set in high school and "sounds like the perfect package for teens" but that "the R rating banned many teens from the theaters" and the studio was left with "an R-rated film marketed to whom, exactly?"[55] Nicole Sperling of Entertainment Weekly felt that it was a slow and disappointing weekend for the box office in general; 3D animated film Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs was steep competition, and with low box office performances by the Matt Damon film The Informant! and Jennifer Aniston film Love Happens, she concluded that this may support "the current hypothesis floating around Hollywood, that movie stars no longer matter" and that it takes more than a name to open a film.[56] S.T. VanAirsdale of Movieline echoed Sperling's sentiment about the weekend, as "some of the stinkiest high-profile openings in recent memory".[57] He concluded five reasons for Jennifer's Body's underperformance at the box office. The first, he said, is the distributor. "20th Century Fox's genre wing, Fox Atomic, had Jennifer's Body in the can by the time the mother ship shut it down last spring", he said. "Instead of offloading the film to Fox Searchlight, which nimbly maneuvered Diablo Cody's previous brainchild Juno to awards-season lucre in 2007, a decision was somehow reached to fill a gap in Big Fox's early fall slate with a gory" and "post-feminist horror romp starring Megan Fox and Amanda Seyfried". VanAirsdale classified this as a "[b]ig mistake" and that "[y]ou'd have to go back to The Devil Wears Prada to find an example of a Fox release that worked without a genuine male lead; you'd probably have to go back to Aliens to find a genre example of such that they pulled off successfully."[57] 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.[57]

VanAirsdale cited the release date and screening as the third and fourth reasons; he said there was confusion about what day the film was going to debut in theaters, and that Toronto is "a nation removed from the audience where the film's actual momentum had been accruing for at least a month" and that "this rarely works for early fall releases; not because news doesn't travel, obviously, but because it peels away a layer of accessibility that accompanies New York and L.A. bows."[57] The final reason, he attributed to the critics, believing that the fusion of horror and teen comedy confused some of them. He mentioned Ty Burr's review in particular, and stated that the film could perhaps have used more horror and been funnier, but that the film is "ultimately a movie about two teenage girls' misadventures in victimization" and that "[t]he jokes are virtually incidental to the friction imposed on women who happen to be two sides of the same coin. Who's the monster, and who made the monster? Sorry if you wanted Heathers with demons, fellas. Equipment's cheap these days; perhaps make your own?"[57]
Hollywood.com box-office analyst and President Paul Dergarabedian said "the poor numbers don't mean Fox can't open a movie."[58] "It may be a matter of just choosing the right projects for her", he told the Associated Press. "She's trying to find a world beyond Transformers, and she will. She's young and has a lot of promise."[58]
Home media

The film was released on DVD and Blu-ray on December 29, 2009 in the United States and Canada. In Australia, the DVD and Blu-ray was released on May 18, 2010.[59] The film opened at #11 at the DVD sales chart, making $1.6 million in the first week off 104,000 DVD units.[60] There is a rated and an unrated version, with the unrated version running about five minutes longer than the theatrical version. The UK Blu-ray lacks most of the extras found on the locked US release.[61][62]
Soundtrack

The film's soundtrack was released by Fueled by Ramen on August 25, 2009, and featured previously released music by various indie rock and alternative rock bands such as White Lies, Florence + The Machine, Silversun Pickups and Black Kids.[66] It also features pop punk band All Time Low and electropop singer Little Boots. In addition, the album features new songs from pop rock artists such as Cobra Starship and Panic! at the Disco and Paramore's lead singer Hayley Williams.[66] The first single from the soundtrack is "New Perspective" by Panic! at the Disco.
The album received a 3 out of 5 review from Allmusic, who described the album as having "a slightly different spin, mixing indie with the more expected punk, emo, and metal".[66] Mike Diver at the BBC wrote an unfavorable review of the album, stating that "This assortment of acts says nothing of its parent film, beyond the occasional reference to school days and nods to something nasty coming this way".[65]
The ending sequence of the film itself features a song, "Violet", from the album Live Through This by Hole. This same album also features a song entitled "Jennifer's Body." In total, the film features 22 songs, most of which are included on the soundtrack.[67]
[64]No.TitleWriter(s)ArtistLength1."Kiss with a Fist"Matt Allchin, Florence WelchFlorence + the Machine2:042."New Perspective"John Feldmann, Brendon UriePanic! at the Disco3:473."Teenagers"Hayley WilliamsHayley Williams2:054."New in Town"Victoria Hesketh, Greg KurstinLittle Boots3:165."Finishing School"Chris CarrabbaDashboard Confessional3:256."Through the Trees"Andrew Ampaya, Ryan LevineLow Shoulder5:047."Time"Cute Is What We Aim For, Feldmann, ShaantCute Is What We Aim For3:578."I Can See Clearly Now"Johnny NashScreeching Weasel2:179."Chew Me Up and Spit Me Out"Cobra Starship, Sam Hollander, Dave KatzCobra Starship3:5710."Toxic Valentine"Alex Gaskarth, Jimmy Harry, Tony KanalAll Time Low2:5211."I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance with You"Black KidsBlack Kids3:3712."Death"Jack Brown, Charles Cave, Harry McVeighWhite Lies5:0013."Celestial Crown"JD CroniseThe Sword2:0014."Little Lover's So Polite"Brian Aubert, Christopher Guanlao, Joseph Lester, Nicole MonningerSilversun Pickups4:5915."Ready for the Floor"Alexis Benjamin Taylor, Owen Clarke, Al Doyle, Joseph Goddard, Felix MartinLissy Trullie, Hot Chip4:00
Deluxe versionNo.TitleArtistLength16."Violet"Hole3:2517."In the Flesh"Low Shoulder2:4118."Running After Chip"Theodore Shapiro2:2919."New Perspective" (Music video)Panic! at the Disco3:47
Graphic novel
As a tie-in to the film, Boom! Studios produced a Jennifer's Body graphic novel. The graphic novel expands on the film's universe and Jennifer's murders of the boys. It was written by Black Metal's Rick Spears, with the first nine pages illustrated by Jim Mahfood (Clerks). Two covers, in Fox's likeness, were designed; one for the direct market by Eric Jones (available only in comic specialty stores), and the other by Frank Cho for the mass market focusing more on "hellish Jennifer stories" with art by Mahfood, Hack/Slash's Tim Seely, DMZ's Nikki Cook, and Popgun's Ming Doyle. The novel was released in August 2009.[68][69][70]
The novel features less of Jennifer than the film, but does capture her "going in for the kill" several times. 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. The novel consists of four chapters, with a prologue and an epilogue, with art provided for each by different artists. Each one follows a different boy and what is happening in his life just before Jennifer kills him.[70]
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. And with comics we can get into the character's heads in a way that works well in comics and novels more so than in film."[70] He stated, "... I was using the medium to change what we really know about these characters and twist around what we see in the movies. All the academics aside, it's also very funny and gore splattered."[70]
Spears stated that while writing the stories, the film was still being made and he had not seen any of it at the time. He mainly learned about the characters through the script. "I got to read the screenplay. It was kinda crazy writing characters that were being changed on set and in the editing process. I had to bob and weave to keep up but that was all part of the fun", he said.[70]
See also
Ginger Snaps (film)—A 2000 film with a similar plot

 on IMDb
 at Box Office Mojo
 at Rotten Tomatoes

How long was production on Jennifer's Body?


Influenza (Flu)
Types
Avian
A/H5N1 subtype
Canine
Equine
Swine
A/H1N1 subtype
Vaccines
2009 pandemic
Pandemrix
Fluzone
Influvac
Fluvax/Flucelvax/Fluad/Fluverin
Live attenuated
Optaflu
Treatment
Amantadine
Laninamivir
Oseltamivir
Peramivir
Rimantadine
Umifenovir
Vitamin D
Zanamivir
Pandemics
1918 Spanish flu
1957 Asian flu
1968–1969 Hong Kong
2009 swine
Outbreaks
1976 swine flu
2006 H5N1 India
2007 Australian equine
2007 Bernard Matthews H5N1
2008 West Bengal
2015 United States H5N2 outbreak
See also
Flu season
Influenza evolution
Influenza research
Influenza-like illness
Vaccine reformulationsvt
The 1918 influenza pandemic (January 1918– December 1920; colloquially known as Spanish flu) was an unusually deadly influenza pandemic, the first of the two pandemics involving H1N1 influenza virus.[1] It infected 500million people around the world,[2] including people on remote Pacific islands and in the Arctic, and resulted in the deaths of 50 to 100million (three to five percent of the world's population),[3] making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history.[4][5][6]
Infectious disease already limited life expectancy in the early 20th century. But in the first year of the pandemic, life expectancy in the United States dropped by about 12 years.[7][8][9] Most influenza outbreaks disproportionately kill juvenile, elderly, or already weakened patients but the 1918 pandemic predominantly killed previously healthy young adults.[10]
To maintain morale, wartime censors minimized early reports of illness and mortality in Germany, the United Kingdom, France, and the United States.[11][12] Papers were free to report the epidemic's effects in neutral Spain (such as the grave illness of King Alfonso XIII).[13] This created a false impression of Spain as especially hard hit,[14] thereby giving rise to the pandemic's nickname, "Spanish Flu".[15]
Scientists offer several possible explanations for the high mortality rate of the 1918 influenza pandemic. Some research suggests that the specific variant of the virus was unusually aggressive. One group of researchers recovered the virus from the bodies of frozen victims, and transfected animals with it, causing a rapidly progressive respiratory failure and death through a cytokine storm (overreaction of the body's immune system). It was postulated that the strong immune reactions of young adults ravaged the body, whereas the weaker immune systems of children and middle-aged adults resulted in fewer deaths among those groups.[16]
In 2007, analysis of medical journals from the period of the pandemic[17][18] found that the viral infection itself was not more aggressive than any previous influenza, but that the special circumstances of the epidemic (malnourishment, overcrowded medical camps and hospitals, poor hygiene) promoted bacterial superinfection that killed most of the victims, typically after a somewhat prolonged death bed.[19][20]
Historical and epidemiological data are inadequate to identify the pandemic's geographic origin.[2] It was implicated in the outbreak of encephalitis lethargica in the 1920s.[21]
History
Hypotheses about the source
The major troop staging and hospital camp in Étaples, France, was identified as being at the center of the Spanish flu by research published in 1999 by a British team, led by virologist John Oxford.[22] In late 1917, military pathologists reported the onset of a new disease with high mortality that they later recognized as the flu. The overcrowded camp and hospital— which treated thousands of victims of chemical attacks and other casualties of war— was an ideal site for the spreading of a respiratory virus; 100,000 soldiers were in transit every day. It also was home to a live piggery, and poultry were regularly brought in for food supplies from surrounding villages. Oxford and his team postulated that a significant precursor virus, harbored in birds, mutated so it could migrate to pigs that were kept near the front.[23][24] In 2018, Michael Worobey, an evolutionary biology professor at Arizona University who is examining the history of the 1918 pandemic, revealed that he obtained tissue slides created by William Rolland, a physician who reported on a respiratory illness likely to be the virus while a pathologist in the British military during World War I.[25] Rolland had authored an article in the Lancet during 1917 about a respiratory illness outbreak beginning in 1916 in Étaples, France.[26] Worobey traced recent references to that article to family members who had retained slides that Rolland had prepared during that time. Worobey is planning to extract tissue from the slides that may reveal more about the origin of the pathogen.
Nevertheless, there have been persistent claims that the epidemic originated in the United States. Historian Alfred W. Crosby claimed that the flu originated in Kansas,[27] and popular author John Barry described Haskell County, Kansas, as the point of origin.[28] It has also been claimed that, by late 1917, there had already been a first wave of the epidemic in at least 14 US military camps.[29]
Earlier hypotheses put forward varying points of origin for the epidemic. Some hypothesized that the flu originated in East Asia, a common area for transmission of disease from animals to humans because of dense living conditions.[30] Claude Hannoun, the leading expert on the 1918 flu for the Pasteur Institute, asserted the former virus was likely to have come from China, mutating in the United States near Boston and spreading to Brest, France, Europe's battlefields, Europe, and the world via Allied soldiers and sailors as the main spreaders.[31] He considered several other hypotheses of origin, such as Spain, Kansas (United States), and Brest, as being possible, but not likely.
Political scientist Andrew Price-Smith published data from the Austrian archives suggesting the influenza had earlier origins, beginning in Austria in early 1917.[32]
In 2014, historian Mark Humphries of the Memorial University of Newfoundland in St. John's stated that newly unearthed records confirmed that one of the side stories of the war, the mobilization of 96,000 Chinese laborers to work behind the British and French lines on World War I's western front, might have been the source of the pandemic. In the report, Humphries found archival evidence that a respiratory illness that struck northern China in November 1917 was identified a year later by Chinese health officials as identical to the "Spanish" flu.[33][34] A report published in 2016 in the Journal of the Chinese Medical Association found no evidence that the 1918 virus was imported to Europe via Chinese and Southeast Asian soldiers and workers. It found evidence that the virus had been circulating in the European armies for months and possibly years before the 1918 pandemic.[35]
Spread
When an infected person sneezes or coughs, more than half a million virus particles can be spread to those close by.[36] The close quarters and massive troop movements of World War I hastened the pandemic, and probably both increased transmission and augmented mutation; the war may also have increased the lethality of the virus. Some speculate the soldiers' immune systems were weakened by malnourishment, as well as the stresses of combat and chemical attacks, increasing their susceptibility.[37]
A large factor in the worldwide occurrence of this flu was increased travel. Modern transportation systems made it easier for soldiers, sailors, and civilian travelers to spread the disease.[38]
In the United States, the disease was first observed in Haskell County, Kansas, in January 1918, prompting local doctor Loring Miner to warn the U.S. Public Health Service's academic journal. On 4 March 1918, company cook Albert Gitchell reported sick at Fort Riley, an American military facility that at the time was training American troops during World War I, making him the first recorded victim of the flu.[39][40] Within days, 522 men at the camp had reported sick.[41] By 11 March 1918, the virus had reached Queens, New York.[42] Failure to take preventive measures in March/April was later criticised.[5]
In August 1918, a more virulent strain appeared simultaneously in Brest, France; in Freetown, Sierra Leone; and in the U.S. in Boston, Massachusetts. The Spanish flu also spread through Ireland, carried there by returning Irish soldiers. The Allies of World War I came to call it the Spanish flu, primarily because the pandemic received greater press attention after it moved from France to Spain in November 1918. Spain was not involved in the war and had not imposed wartime censorship.[43]
Mortality
Around the globe

The global mortality rate from the 1918/1919 pandemic is not known, but an estimated 10% to 20% of those who were infected died. With about a third of the world population infected, this case-fatality ratio means 3% to 6% of the entire global population died.[2] Influenza may have killed as many as 25million people in its first 25 weeks. Older estimates say it killed 40–50million people,[4] while current estimates say 50–100million people worldwide were killed.[46]
This pandemic has been described as "the greatest medical holocaust in history" and may have killed more people than the Black Death.[47] It is said that this flu killed more people in 24 weeks than AIDS killed in 24 years, and more in a year than the Black Death killed in a century,[16] although the Black Death killed a much higher percentage of the world's smaller population at the time.[48]
The disease killed in every area of the globe. As many as 17million people died in India, about 5% of the population.[49] The death toll in India's British-ruled districts alone was 13.88 million.[50]
In Japan, of the 23 million people who were affected, 390,000 died.[51] In the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia), 1.5 million were assumed to have died among 30 million inhabitants.[52] In Tahiti 13% of the population died during one month. Similarly, in Samoa 22% of the population of 38,000 died within two months.[53]
In Iran, the mortality was very high: according to an estimate, between 902,400 and 2,431,000, or 8.0% to 21.7% of the total population died.[54]
In the U.S., about 28% of the population became infected, and 500,000 to 675,000 died.[55] Native American tribes were particularly hard hit. In the Four Corners area alone, 3,293 deaths were registered among Native Americans.[56] Entire Inuit and Alaskan Native village communities died in Alaska.[57] In Canada 50,000 died.[58]
In Brazil, 300,000 died, including president Rodrigues Alves.[59] In Britain, as many as 250,000 died; in France, more than 400,000.[60]
In West Africa the influenza epidemic killed at least 100,000 people in Ghana.[61] Tafari Makonnen (the future Haile Selassie, Emperor of Ethiopia) was one of the first Ethiopians who contracted influenza but survived.[62][63] Many of his subjects did not; estimates for fatalities in the capital city, Addis Ababa, range from 5,000 to 10,000, or higher.[64] In British Somaliland, one official estimated that 7% of the native population died.[65]
This huge death toll was caused by an extremely high infection rate of up to 50% and the extreme severity of the symptoms, suspected to be caused by cytokine storms.[4] Symptoms in 1918 were so unusual that initially influenza was misdiagnosed as dengue, cholera, or typhoid. One observer wrote, "One of the most striking of the complications was hemorrhage from mucous membranes, especially from the nose, stomach, and intestine. Bleeding from the ears and petechial hemorrhages in the skin also occurred".[46] The majority of deaths were from bacterial pneumonia,[66][67] a common secondary infection associated with influenza. The virus also killed people directly, by causing massive hemorrhages and edema in the lung.[67]
The unusually severe disease killed up to 20% of those infected, as opposed to the usual flu epidemic mortality rate of 0.1%.[2][46]
Patterns of fatality
The pandemic mostly killed young adults. In 1918–1919, 99% of pandemic influenza deaths in the U.S. occurred in people under 65, and nearly half in young adults 20 to 40years old. In 1920, the mortality rate among people under 65 had decreased sixfold to half the mortality rate of people over 65, but still 92% of deaths occurred in people under 65.[68] This is unusual, since influenza is normally most deadly to weak individuals, such as infants (under age two), the very old (over age 70), and the immunocompromised. In 1918, older adults may have had partial protection caused by exposure to the 1889–1890 flu pandemic, known as the Russian flu.[69]
According to historian John M. Barry, the most vulnerable of all– "those most likely, of the most likely", to die– were pregnant women. He reported that in thirteen studies of hospitalized women in the pandemic, the death rate ranged from 23% to 71%.[70]
Of the pregnant women who survived childbirth, over one-quarter (26%) lost the child.[71]
Another oddity was that the outbreak was widespread in the summer and autumn (in the Northern Hemisphere); influenza is usually worse in winter.[72]
Modern analysis has shown the virus to be particularly deadly because it triggers a cytokine storm, which ravages the stronger immune system of young adults.[28]
In fast-progressing cases, mortality was primarily from pneumonia, by virus-induced pulmonary consolidation. Slower-progressing cases featured secondary bacterial pneumonias, and there may have been neural involvement that led to mental disorders in some cases. Some deaths resulted from malnourishment.
A study– conducted by He et al.– used a mechanistic modelling approach to study the three waves of the 1918 influenza pandemic. They tried to study the factors that underlie variability in temporal patterns, and the patterns of mortality and morbidity. Their analysis suggests that temporal variations in transmission rate provide the best explanation, and the variation in transmission required to generate these three waves is within biologically plausible values.[73]
Another study by He et al. used a simple epidemic model, to incorporate three factors, including school opening and closing, temperature changes over the course of the outbreak, and human behavioral changes in response to the outbreak, to infer the cause of the three waves of the 1918 influenza pandemic. Their modelling results showed that all three factors are important but human behavioral responses showed the largest effects.[74]
Deadly second wave

The second wave of the 1918 pandemic was much deadlier than the first. The first wave had resembled typical flu epidemics; those most at risk were the sick and elderly, while younger, healthier people recovered easily. But by  August, when the second wave began in France, Sierra Leone, and the United States,[75] the virus had mutated to a much deadlier form. As the PBS American Experience: Influenza 1918 episode says, October 1918 was the deadliest month of the whole pandemic.
This increased severity has been attributed to the circumstances of the First World War.[76] In civilian life, natural selection favors a mild strain. Those who get very ill stay home, and those mildly ill continue with their lives, preferentially spreading the mild strain. In the trenches, natural selection was reversed. Soldiers with a mild strain stayed where they were, while the severely ill were sent on crowded trains to crowded field hospitals, spreading the deadlier virus. The second wave began and the flu quickly spread around the world again. Consequently, during modern pandemics, health officials pay attention when the virus reaches places with social upheaval (looking for deadlier strains of the virus).[77]
The fact that most of those who recovered from first-wave infections had become immune showed that it must have been the same strain of flu. This was most dramatically illustrated in Copenhagen, which escaped with a combined mortality rate of just 0.29% (0.02% in the first wave and 0.27% in the second wave) because of exposure to the less-lethal first wave.[78] For the rest of the population, the second wave was far more deadly; the most vulnerable people were those like the soldiers in the trenches– young previously healthy adults.[79]
Devastated communities

Even in areas where mortality was low, so many adults were incapacitated that much of everyday life was hampered. Some communities closed all stores or required customers to leave orders outside. There were reports that health-care workers could not tend the sick nor the gravediggers bury the dead because they too were ill. Mass graves were dug by steam shovel and bodies buried without coffins in many places.[80]
Several Pacific island territories were particularly hard-hit. The pandemic reached them from New Zealand, which was too slow to implement measures to prevent ships carrying the flu from leaving its ports. From New Zealand, the flu reached Tonga (killing 8% of the population), Nauru (16%) and Fiji (5%, 9,000 people).[81]
Worst affected was Western Samoa, formerly German Samoa, which had been occupied by New Zealand in 1914. 90% of the population was infected; 30% of adult men, 22% of adult women and 10% of children died. By contrast, Governor John Martin Poyer prevented the flu from reaching American Samoa by imposing a blockade.[81] The disease spread fastest through the higher social classes among the indigenous peoples, because of the custom of gathering oral tradition from chiefs on their deathbeds; many community elders were infected through this process.[82]
In New Zealand, 8,573 deaths were attributed to the 1918 pandemic influenza, resulting in a total population fatality rate of 0.74%.[83] Māori were 10 times as likely to die as pākehā (Europeans), because of their poorer and more crowded housing, and rural population.[82]
In Ireland, the Spanish Flu accounted for 10% of the total deaths in 1918.
Data analysis revealed 6,520 recorded deaths in Savannah-Chatham County, Georgia (population = 83,252) for the three-year period from January 1, 1917, to December 31, 1919. Of these deaths, influenza was specifically listed as the cause of death in 316 cases, representing 4.85 percent of all causes of death for the total time period.[84]
Less-affected areas
In Japan, 257,363 deaths were attributed to influenza by July 1919, giving an estimated 0.425% mortality rate, much lower than nearly all other Asian countries for which data are available. The Japanese government severely restricted sea travel to and from the home islands when the pandemic struck.
In the Pacific, American Samoa[85] and the French colony of New Caledonia[86] also succeeded in preventing even a single death from influenza through effective quarantines. In Australia, nearly 12,000 perished.[87]
By the end of the pandemic, the isolated island of Marajó, in Brazil's Amazon River Delta had not reported an outbreak.[88]
Saint Helena also reported no deaths.[89]
Aspirin poisoning
In a 2009 paper published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases, Karen Starko proposed that aspirin poisoning contributed substantially to the fatalities. She based this on the reported symptoms in those dying from the flu, as reported in the post mortem reports still available, and also the timing of the big "death spike" in October 1918. This occurred shortly after the Surgeon General of the United States Army and the Journal of the American Medical Association both recommended very large doses of 8 to 31 grams of aspirin per day as part of treatment. These levels will produce hyperventilation in 33% of patients, as well as lung edema in 3% of patients.[90] Starko also notes that many early deaths showed "wet," sometimes hemorrhagic lungs, whereas late deaths showed bacterial pneumonia. She suggests that the wave of aspirin poisonings was due to a "perfect storm" of events: Bayer's patent on aspirin expired, so many companies rushed in to make a profit and greatly increased the supply; this coincided with the Spanish flu; and the symptoms of aspirin poisoning were not known at the time.[90]
As an explanation for the universally high mortality rate, this hypothesis was questioned in a letter to the journal published in April 2010 by Andrew Noymer and Daisy Carreon of the University of California, Irvine, and Niall Johnson of the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care. They questioned the universal applicability of the aspirin theory, given the high mortality rate in countries such as India, where there was little or no access to aspirin at the time compared to the rate where aspirin was plentiful.[91] They concluded that "the salicylate [aspirin] poisoning hypothesis [was] difficult to sustain as the primary explanation for the unusual virulence of the 1918–1919 inﬂuenza pandemic".[91] In response, Starko said there was anecdotal evidence of aspirin use in India and argued that even if aspirin over-prescription had not contributed to the high Indian mortality rate, it could still have been a factor for high rates in areas where other exacerbating factors present in India played less of a role.[92]
End of the pandemic
After the lethal second wave struck in late 1918, new cases dropped abruptly– almost to nothing after the peak in the second wave.[16] In Philadelphia, for example, 4,597 people died in the week ending 16 October, but by 11 November, influenza had almost disappeared from the city. One explanation for the rapid decline of the lethality of the disease is that doctors got better at preventing and treating the pneumonia that developed after the victims had contracted the virus; but John Barry stated in his book that researchers have found no evidence to support this.[28]
Another theory holds that the 1918 virus mutated extremely rapidly to a less lethal strain. This is a common occurrence with influenza viruses: there is a tendency for pathogenic viruses to become less lethal with time, as the hosts of more dangerous strains tend to die out[28] (see also "Deadly Second Wave", above).
Long-term effects
A 2006 study in the Journal of Political Economy found that "cohorts in utero during the pandemic displayed reduced educational attainment, increased rates of physical disability, lower income, lower socioeconomic status, and higher transfer payments compared with other birth cohorts."[93] A 2018 study found that the pandemic reduced educational attainment in populations.[94]
Legacy

Academic Andrew Price-Smith has made the argument that the virus helped tip the balance of power in the later days of the war towards the Allied cause. He provides data that the viral waves hit the Central Powers before they hit the Allied powers, and that both morbidity and mortality in Germany and Austria were considerably higher than in Britain and France.[32]
In the United States, Britain and other countries, despite the relatively high morbidity and mortality rates that resulted from the epidemic in 1918–1919, the Spanish flu began to fade from public awareness over the decades until the arrival of news about bird flu and other pandemics in the 1990s and 2000s.[95] This has led some historians to label the Spanish flu a "forgotten pandemic".[27]
Various theories of why the Spanish flu was "forgotten" include the rapid pace of the pandemic, which killed most of its victims in the United States, for example, within a period of less than nine months, resulting in limited media coverage. The general population was familiar with patterns of pandemic disease in the late 19th and early 20th centuries: typhoid, yellow fever, diphtheria, and cholera all occurred near the same time. These outbreaks probably lessened the significance of the influenza pandemic for the public.[96] In some areas, the flu was not reported on, the only mention being that of advertisements for medicines claiming to cure it.[97]
In addition, the outbreak coincided with the deaths and media focus on the First World War.[98] Another explanation involves the age group affected by the disease. The majority of fatalities, from both the war and the epidemic, were among young adults. The deaths caused by the flu may have been overlooked due to the large numbers of deaths of young men in the war or as a result of injuries. When people read the obituaries, they saw the war or postwar deaths and the deaths from the influenza side by side. Particularly in Europe, where the war's toll was extremely high, the flu may not have had a great, separate, psychological impact, or may have seemed a mere extension of the war's tragedies.[68]
The duration of the pandemic and the war could have also played a role. The disease would usually only affect a certain area for a month before leaving, while the war, which most had initially expected to end quickly, had lasted for four years by the time the pandemic struck. This left little time for the disease to have a significant impact on the economy.
Regarding global economic effects, many businesses in the entertainment and service industries suffered losses in revenue, while the health care industry reported profit gains.[99]

Historian Nancy Bristow has argued that the pandemic, when combined with the increasing number of women attending college, contributed to the success of women in the field of nursing. This was due in part to the failure of medical doctors, who were predominantly men, to contain and prevent the illness. Nursing staff, who were predominantly women, felt more inclined to celebrate the success of their patient care and less inclined to identify the spread of the disease with their own work.[100]
In Spain, sources from the period explicitly linked the Spanish flu to the cultural figure of Don Juan. The nickname for the flu, the "Naples Soldier", was adopted from Federico Romero and Guillermo Fernández Shaw's operetta, The Song of Forgetting (La canción del olvido), the protagonist of which is a stock Don Juan type. Federico Romero, one of the librettists, quipped that the play's most popular musical number, Naples Soldier, was as catchy as the flu. Davis has argued the Spanish flu–Don Juan connection served a cognitive function, allowing Spaniards to make sense of their epidemic experience by interpreting it through a familiar template, namely the Don Juan story.[101]
Spanish flu research

The origin of the Spanish flu pandemic, and the relationship between the near-simultaneous outbreaks in humans and swine, have been controversial. One hypothesis is that the virus strain originated at Fort Riley, Kansas, in viruses in poultry and swine which the fort bred for food; the soldiers were then sent from Fort Riley around the world, where they spread the disease.[102] Similarities between a reconstruction of the virus and avian viruses, combined with the human pandemic preceding the first reports of influenza in swine, led researchers to conclude the influenza virus jumped directly from birds to humans, and swine caught the disease from humans.[103][104]
Others have disagreed,[105] and more recent research has suggested the strain may have originated in a nonhuman, mammalian species.[106] An estimated date for its appearance in mammalian hosts has been put at the period 1882–1913.[107] This ancestor virus diverged about 1913–1915 into two clades (or biological groups), which gave rise to the classical swine and human H1N1 influenza lineages. The last common ancestor of human strains dates to between February 1917 and April 1918. Because pigs are more readily infected with avian influenza viruses than are humans, they were suggested as the original recipients of the virus, passing the virus to humans sometime between 1913 and 1918.
An effort to recreate the 1918 flu strain (a subtype of avian strain H1N1) was a collaboration among the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology, the USDA ARS Southeast Poultry Research Laboratory and Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City. The effort resulted in the announcement (on 5 October 2005) that the group had successfully determined the virus's genetic sequence, using historic tissue samples recovered by pathologist Johan Hultin from a female flu victim buried in the Alaskan permafrost and samples preserved from American soldiers.[108]
On 18 January 2007, Kobasa et al. (2007) reported that monkeys (Macaca fascicularis) infected with the recreated flu strain exhibited classic symptoms of the 1918 pandemic, and died from cytokine storms[109]—an overreaction of the immune system. This may explain why the 1918 flu had its surprising effect on younger, healthier people, as a person with a stronger immune system would potentially have a stronger overreaction.[110]
On 16 September 2008, the body of British politician and diplomat Sir Mark Sykes was exhumed to study the RNA of the flu virus in efforts to understand the genetic structure of modern H5N1 bird flu. Sykes had been buried in 1919 in a lead coffin which scientists hoped had helped preserve the virus.[111] The coffin was found to be split because of the weight of soil over it, and the cadaver was badly decomposed. Nonetheless, samples of lung and brain tissue were taken through the split, with the coffin remaining in situ in the grave during this process.[112]
In December 2008, research by Yoshihiro Kawaoka of the University of Wisconsin linked the presence of three specific genes (termed PA, PB1, and PB2) and a nucleoprotein derived from 1918 flu samples to the ability of the flu virus to invade the lungs and cause pneumonia. The combination triggered similar symptoms in animal testing.[113]
In June 2010, a team at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine reported the 2009 flu pandemic vaccine provided some cross-protection against the 1918 flu pandemic strain.[114]
One of the few things known for certain about the influenza in 1918 and for some years after was that it was, out of the laboratory, exclusively a disease of human beings.[115]
In 2013, the AIR Worldwide Research and Modeling Group "characterized the historic 1918 pandemic and estimated the effects of a similar pandemic occurring today using the AIR Pandemic Flu Model". In the model, "a modern day "Spanish flu" event would result in additional life insurance losses of between USD 15.3–27.8 billion in the United States alone", with 188,000–337,000 deaths in the United States.[116]
Gallery

Two American Red Cross nurses demonstrating treatment practices during the influenza pandemic of 1918.
Albertan farmers wearing masks to protect themselves from the flu.
Policemen wearing masks provided by the American Red Cross in Seattle, 1918
A street car conductor in Seattle in 1918 refusing to allow passengers aboard who are not wearing masks
Red Cross workers remove a flu victim in St. Louis, Missouri (1918)
Influenza ward at Walter Reed Hospital during the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918–1919
Burying flu victims, North River, Newfoundland and Labrador (1918)
1919 Tokyo, Japan
Japanese poster in 1919
Demonstration at the Red Cross Emergency Ambulance Station in Washington, D.C., during the influenza pandemic of 1918
Cavalry memorial on the hill Lueg, memory of the Bernese cavalrymen victims of the 1918 flu pandemic; Emmental, Bern, Switzerland
The Spanish flu as the Naples Soldier (Spain, 1918)
Spanish biologists and the flu microbe (Spain, 1918)

See also

Notes

Bibliography

– Open access material by the Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Health Sciences Research Commons.

 Cite uses deprecated parameter |deadurl= (help)

 Cite uses deprecated parameter |deadurl= (help)
Bristow, Nancy K. American Pandemic: The Lost Worlds of the 1918 Influenza Epidemic (OUP, 2012)
 Cite uses deprecated parameter |deadurl= (help)

 ( by Infectious Diseases Society of America and ScienceDaily, October 3, 2009)

 Cite uses deprecated parameter |deadurl= (help)

Further reading

Humphries, Mark Osborne. The Last Plague: Spanish Influenza and the Politics of Public Health in Canada (University of Toronto Press; 29013) examines  the public-policy impact of the 1918 epidemic, which killed 50,000 Canadians.

 on YouTube

 on stanford.edu
 US Dept. of HHS
 Largest digital collection of newspapers, archival manuscripts and interpretive essays exploring the impact of the epidemic on 50 U.S. cities (Univ. of Michigan).

 US National Archives and Records Administration– pictures and records of the time

 "American Experience" PBS.

 Annotated links to articles, books and scientific research on the 1918 influenza pandemic

 1918 newspaper account on impact of flu on Minneapolis
 University of Wisconsin– Madison, 17 January 2007

– Exposure to virus generates lifelong immune response.
– Database of influenza genomic sequences and related information.

 a comic book of the 1918 flu pandemic published by Seattle & King County Public Health
 An online exhibit from the National Museum of Health and Medicine.
 Produced by Sheffield City Council's Libraries and Archives