"Jennifer's Body" (Karyn Kusama) vs. "A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night" (Ana Lily Amirpour)

​"Men looking over their shoulders as they walk down dark alleyways" might just be my new favorite film genre, whether they be the halls of high school or the labyrinth of an Iranian-Western-film-noir dystopia. Time to dig out your skateboard and your teenage crush on Megan Fox because this bracket was FUCKING FUN.

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Jennifer's Body (2009)

Directed by: Karyn Kusama
Written by: Diablo Cody
Starring: Megan Fox, Amanda Seyfried, Adam Brody ​
IMDB Synopsis: A newly possessed high school cheerleader turns into a succubus who specializes in killing her male classmates. Can her best friend put an end to the horror?

​Karyn Kusama...

"I'm a director first and foremost, and I hope that the fact that I'm female is just one of the many things that informs my unique perspective on the world."

​It is impossible to talk about how AHEAD OF ITS TIME and ICONIC this movie is without including one of my favorite ladies in the conversation, the wildly talented and accoladed writer, Diablo Cody:
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​"Karyn Kusama did such a killer job directing that movie, and I think it was so unconventional, and so specifically about the girls in a way that excluded a lot of people – and in a way that I love, because I’m all about specific art. I would rather make something that ten people adore than make something that 100 million people like enough to buy a ticket to. So I just think it’s a very specific piece. ...At the time, there was a lot of negativity around the movie, because I was very outspoken at that time, Megan Fox was very outspoken at that time… I love that she was speaking her mind. But she was punished for it. People don’t like women with big mouths, and there were a lot of them on that project. So, you know, let’s chalk it up to misogyny." 

- The Playlist, Lena Wilson

And now let's talk about why this movie came about 7 years too early:

The Megan Fox of it all. The way I remembered the situation was that she was only famous for being in Transformers, and then was only famous for calling Michael Bay "a nightmare to work with," and then got fired from Transformers and Michael Bay replaced her character with a literal Victoria's Secret Angel. At the time, everyone thought Fox was being a spoiled brat, biting the hand that fed her.

I re-visited those headlines to look at them through some adult, post-#MeToo-era glasses, and WOW IT WAS ACTUALLY SO MUCH WORSE THAN THAT. You know what Fox actually said, the quote that spurned Michael Bay's wrath and stalled her career for years? 
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“[Michael] wants to create this insane, infamous mad-man reputation. He wants to be like Hitler on his sets, and he is. So he’s a nightmare to work for but when you get him away from set, and he’s not in director mode, I kind of really enjoy his personality because he’s so awkward, so hopelessly awkward. He has no social skills at all. It’s endearing to watch him. He’s so vulnerable and fragile in real life and then on set, he’s a tyrant.”

And do you remember what Bay's response was?? He literally enlisted the entire crew of Transformers to write an "open letter" to her that was then published in every magazine and website on the internet. Just a quick little excerpt:
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"When facing the press, Megan is the queen of talking trailer trash and posing like a porn star. And yes we’ve had the unbearable time of watching her try to act on set, and yes, it’s very cringe-able. So maybe, being a porn star in the future might be a good career option. But make-up beware, she has a paragraph tattooed to her backside (probably due her rotten childhood) — easily another 45 minutes in the chair!" - Loyal Transformers Crew

In the other 6 ridiculous paragraphs, she is also referred to as "Ms. Sourpants," "unfriendly bitch," "dumb-as-rocks," and told that she should "smile more." AND ALL OF THIS BECAUSE SHE SAID HER DIRECTOR WAS "SOMETIMES A LITTLE AWKWARD." Sure, she was 23 and a little snarky and maybe calling him "Hitler" was a bit much. But Jesus Christ, did she really deserve all that? This from the same man who cast her as an extra in Bad Boys II when she was a minor, of which Fox has said: 
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“They said, you know, Michael, she’s 15 so you can’t sit her at the bar…so his solution to that problem was to then have me dancing underneath a waterfall getting soaking wet. At 15, I was in 10th grade. So that’s sort of a microcosm of how Bay’s mind works.”

So yeah, Jesus Christ, no wonder the world wasn't ready for an angry, horny, vulgar teenager girl to go around eating boys. Which is a shame, because Megan Fox does SUCH A GOOD JOB OF IT. To be fair, this is no Juno - Diablo Cody's Oscar-winning masterpiece - but there are still some pretty fucking memorable quotes in it, not just from Fox - and her equally hilarious counterpart, the always-perfect Amanda Seyfried - but from the myriad of hilarious ancillary characters, reminding me of all the reasons why you couldn't pay me to go back in time to high school (or any place where I'd have to dress like it was 2009 again). 
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(My personal fave)

(My second fave)

The whole premise of the film is totally ahead of its time too: a teen girl from a small town gets mistaken for a virgin when a struggling indie band attempts to make a sacrifice to Satan in exchange for fame and glory. Jennifer, who "isn't even a backdoor virgin," gets accidentally turned into a blood-sucking demon in the process. 

But beneath that hilarious and progressive take on the anti-slut-shaming movement, the deeper story is about two teenage girls in a toxic, manipulative friendship, and how hard it is to "break up" with your mean high school girl friend. There is a lot of thinly veiled sexual tension between them (part of what makes this film a cult-classic amongst the gays today), highlighting the age-old question of "do I want to be her or be on her?", something all queer teens struggled with as youths. Diablo Cody's razor sharp, internet-flavored wit keeps this from becoming a salacious, blood-and-tits gore show for teenage boys, and instead curates it as the iconic, gut-wrenching and gut-eviscerating horror comedy for teenage girls that it was always intended to be. 
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“The movie was really the movie I wanted to make and the movie that Diablo Cody wrote. In regards to its marketing, it was an epic misstep and they sold it to boys instead of to the girls who it was written for, and by, and about." - Karyn Kusama

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A Girl Walks Home Alone At Night (2014)

Written & Directed by:  Ana Lily Amirpour
Starring: Sheila Vand & ​Arash Marandi
IMDB Synopsis: In the Iranian ghost-town Bad City, a place that reeks of death and loneliness, the townspeople are unaware they are being stalked by a lonesome vampire.

Ana Lily Amirpour...

"As an artist, and for me personally, my biggest fear is categorization. I hate the idea that I would become someone who says that "this is what I do and now that's what I am." What I really feel like is an explorer. I want to continue exploring my brain cave and see what's there, you know? And I don't want to just stay in one cave."

​An Iranian, black-and-white Western about vampires: you know, the obvious combination of all genres. Despite the similarities between these two films - horror movies that reimagine their villains as literal man-eaters - it feels impossible to compare them when they have such radically different strengths. Jennifer’s Body offers laugh-out-loud funny, razor-sharp witticisms, and A Girl is all but silent.

Instead, Amirpour carefully brews a tantalizing portrait of a dark and seedy town in desperate need of some vigilante justice, which comes in the brilliant shape of a vampiric heroine. The story is quiet and pulsing with tension, and the subtle thread of romance is pleasantly nuanced. Ironically, nothing is (morally) black and white in this little film noir masterpiece, and I don’t want to say anything more about it because it’s definitely one of my favorites of the entire bracket and everyone should watch this movie and support my massive crush on the skateboarding, androgynous, shape-shifting icon that is Ana Lily Amirpour.

I’m struggling to pinpoint exactly why I like Amirpour so much, and why her subtle, slow-burn style works for me whereas other, arguably similar filmmakers don’t. There is definitely a case to be made for at least a few similarities between A Girl and something like, say, Winter’s Bone: they both follow a young woman around the seedy underbelly of a broken home town, incapable of ignoring the chance to right a wrong when she sees one. But one of those was fucking awesome, and the other one only had Baby J. Law going for it (sorry). 

The aesthetics are an undeniable component - I really fucking dig a well done gothic vamp story, and the weirder it is, the better. I will never tire of films about women destroying bad men (however literally), and I appreciate it when those stories include generously fleshed out male characters that can serve as a substantial foil. The music and costumes (Natalie O'Brien) were perfect, the cinematography was exceptional (Lyle Vincent). It was moody without being overly sentimental, violent without being gratuitous, and morally ambiguous enough to teeter deliciously on the edge between a feminist vengeance thriller and a heartbreaking film noir tragedy.

​In short: this movie fucking rocks.

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And the winner is...

Don't get me wrong, Jennifer's Body is fucking FUN and if you've never seen it (or haven't seen it in a while), trust me when I say she's worth the re-watch. But ultimately, when you're dealing with the nuanced genius that is Amirpour, brilliant beats fun. 
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ATTENTION: ADDENDUM

Yes, I'm making ANOTHER last minute change to my bracket because it's MINE and I fucking can. This whole thing was supposed to be about watching new movies and exploring the wide world of under-appreciated talent when it comes to women directed films, and during the re-branding I made a lot of edits to include some more familiar titles. Unfortunately, that meant putting a handful of movies that I have already seen on the bracket, and this last stretch has had the most re-watches yet.

So, while it made PERFECT SENSE to match up Sofia Coppola's Lost in Translation with Lulu Wang's The Farewell, I am replacing the latter with Marielle Heller's Can You Ever Forgive Me. I haven't seen Lost in Translation since, like, high school, and it seems impossible not to include someone as iconic as Coppola on a female director list. I watched The Farewell when it came out around 6 months ago, and while I thought it was a heartfelt story with a really great, subtle performance from Awkwafina (love her), I can't confidently say that it was worth a re-watch. Heller is someone who's film choices increasingly fascinate me, and I have been wanting to watch Melissa McCarthy's surprising turn in a serious role (and Oscar nominated!) for awhile, so THAT'S WHAT'S HAPPENING, FOLKS.

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