I spend a lot of my life talking to the people who make the movies we love.
As a long-time co-host of Bloody Disgusting’s interview podcast, The Boo Crew Podcast, I’ve had the privilege of sitting down with some of the most fascinating voices working in horror today. Over the years, we’ve welcomed Diablo Cody onto the show multiple times, and in 2019, we celebrated the 10th anniversary of Jennifer’s Body with a special conversation with Megan Fox.
But my relationship with Jennifer’s Body goes deeper than interviews.
The film arrived during a massive turning point in my life: the year my first child was born. When you become a parent, everything shifts. Identity rearranges itself. The world suddenly feels heavier, stranger, and more meaningful all at once!
Somewhere in the middle of that life earthquake came this vibrant, razor-sharp horror film directed by Karyn Kusama and written by Cody.
It hit me like lightning.
Fresh. Dangerous. Funny. Sad. Electrifying in ways that were hard to fully articulate at the time. Beneath the neon humor and supernatural carnage lived something deeper…transformation masquerading as empowerment, and a mythology about exploitation that felt uncomfortably real.
Even then, it felt like the film was building its own universe while commenting on the one that created it.
And maybe part of why it resonated so strongly was that it felt misunderstood when it first arrived. For those of us who recognized what it was doing immediately, it felt like discovering a secret. Something specific. Something personal.
Over time, that connection grew. Admiration turned into fascination. Fascination turned into collecting. Through conversations, emails, and shared enthusiasm, I found myself connecting with some of the incredible artists who helped bring the film to life.
Then something even more special happened.
My daughter Scarlett grew up.
Scarlett is now seventeen, the same age as Jennifer’s Body itself.
When she finally watched the film for the first time, something clicked instantly. She didn’t need the years of cultural reappraisal to understand it. She felt it immediately: the tragedy embedded inside the horror, the themes of transformation, the strange sadness behind Jennifer’s monstrous rebirth.
When I asked Scarlett what stuck with her most about the film, she immediately went to one of its most haunting moments, the night Jennifer returns to Needy’s house.
Before the audience ever learns exactly what happened to her in the woods, the film lets us sit with the aftermath first. Jennifer shows up soaked, shaken, and altered in a way that feels far worse than anything we’ve seen.
Scarlett articulated it perfectly.
“That scene is really sad more than scary,” Scarlett told me. “She looks like something terrible happened to her, but you don’t know what yet. Your imagination fills in the worst possibilities. There’s a tremendous amount of grief baked into the horror and into the monster. It’s incredibly powerful.”
Watching her connect with the film on her own terms was surreal.
When I first experienced Jennifer’s Body, I was becoming a father. The film arrived right as my life was transforming.
Scarlett is encountering it at the opposite side of that journey.
She isn’t just watching the film, she’s being shaped by it.
The story that once resonated with a brand-new parent is now resonating with someone becoming herself. A film about transformation, identity, rage, and survival, landing at the exact moment she’s forming her own understanding of the world.
That’s the strange magic of art when it lasts long enough.
It stops belonging to the moment that created it and starts belonging to the people who grow up with it.
And lately Scarlett has been discovering her own voice behind the camera as well. She’s been diving into filmmaking and production through her high school’s student-run podcast and daily television show. Seeing her curiosity for storytelling grow made us want to try something cool together.
So we packed our gear and headed to Vancouver.
Following the Footsteps of Devil’s Kettle
What started as a father-daughter adventure quickly became something bigger.
We set out to track down as many filming locations from Jennifer’s Body as possible, exploring the real-world spaces that helped build the fictional town of Devil’s Kettle.
To our surprise, no one had ever documented the film’s locations in this depth, if at all, ever before.
So we followed the breadcrumbs…and almost twenty years later…it’s pretty much all still intact!
Quiet Vancouver neighborhoods that doubled as Devil’s Kettle streets. Forest edges where ritual and transformation unfolded. Schools, houses, and back roads that now feel haunted by the mythology the film created.
Walking those spaces together was surreal.
Movies live in our imagination, but standing in the real places where they were made adds another dimension. Ordinary streets suddenly carry cinematic ghosts. A stunning patch of forest hums with the memory of a sacrifice scene.
For Scarlett and me, the trip became more than a filming-location tour.
It became a shared exploration of a story that had shaped both of us in different ways. Cinematic archaeology.
The result is the video releasing today here on Bloody Disgusting, a deep dive into the real-world filming locations of Jennifer’s Body, and the first time this level of location documentation has been attempted for the film.
It was a labor of love from beginning to end.
A Film That Grew With Us
One of the most fascinating things about revisiting Jennifer’s Body today is realizing how much its reputation has evolved.
The film has undergone one of cinema’s most satisfying cultural reappraisals. What once felt misunderstood now feels prophetic. Audiences have caught up with the film’s satire of exploitation, its commentary on fame and manipulation, and the tragedy embedded in Jennifer’s transformation.
For Scarlett, discovering those themes at seventeen, the same age as the film itself, creates an eerie symmetry.
The story that resonated with a new father years ago now resonates with someone just beginning to shape her own creative voice.
That kind of cross-generational connection is rare.
But Jennifer’s Body has always operated on that strange emotional frequency.
What Comes Next….
There’s also exciting movement happening around the creative voices who brought the film to life!
Diablo Cody and producer / manager Mason Novick are about to unveil the witchy new project Forbidden Fruits, directed by Meredith Alloway, on March 27.
Jennifer’s Body director, Karyn Kusama, has also let it slip that, apparently, Diablo has been busy putting pen to paper on a Jennifer’s Body sequel.
As for Scarlett and me….this adventure sparked something.
Exploring Vancouver through the lens of a film that meant so much to us was too much fun to do just once. We’re already planning more journeys like this, diving into the real-world locations behind other movies that have shaped our lives and our love of horror.
Because sometimes movies aren’t just stories.
Sometimes they become maps.
And if you’re lucky enough, you get to follow those roads with someone you love.
You can watch our full Jennifer’s Body filming locations exploration now here on Bloody Disgusting and on the Bloody Disgusting YouTube channel!