Madison Beer’s ‘Make You Mine’ – A Horror Homage to ‘Jennifer’s Body’ (2009)

Key Takeaways

It’s no secret that Madison Beer, the platinum-selling hitmaker with studio albums including Life Support (2021) and Silence Between Songs (2023), is a fan of horror movies. American Horror Story is one of her favorite anthology TV series. The Orphan (2009|) is her favorite movie, and her choice of role in a slasher movie would be as a murderer. “I don’t want to be getting killed” she has said candidly in an interview “I want to be like the psycho.” It looks like there will be no Final Girl-style cameo in a horror movie for Madison Beer any time soon.

WATCH: Madison Beer Make You Mine video

However, Madison Beer has just released the music video for her viral hit Make You Mine. This is good news for horror fans. It’s filled with references to the horror-comedy Jennifer’s Body, one of the most memorable slasher movies of recent times that gave Megan Fox her breakout role. For those who missed Fox’s kick-ass performance back in 2009, Jennifer’s Body was a commercial flop that became an unlikely cult classic.

Fox plays Jennifer Check, a beautiful high-school cheerleader. She is childhood friends with Anita “Needy” Lesnicki, played with wide-eyed nerdy innocence by Amanda Seyfried. Their friendship takes a very gory turn when Jennifer seduces their high-school football captain. A high-school date ends in bloodshed when Jennifer lures the jock into the woods, tears him limb from limb, and cannibalizes his dead body. Jennifer is a cannibalistic man-killer with a lust for male blood – and Needy is the only one who can stop her. 

Horror fans love to talk about Jennifer’s Body. It’s what Mean Girls (2004) would have looked like if you had thrown a man-eating cheerleader into the cliquey high-school politics. It also has a kiss scene between Fox and Amanda Seyfried. And it has dialogue like this: “Why don’t you just come by my place tonight? I just got Aquamarine on DVD. It’s about this girl who’s like, half-sushi. I guess she has sex through her blowhole or something”. It is trashy horror cinema whilst also being celebrated as a queer horror movie. As the top Letterbox review for Jennifer’s Body puts it, ‘This is Twilight for Bi Girls”.

No wonder Jennifer’s Body inspired Madison Beer’s latest music video. Beer easily steps into the eye-catching role of Jennifer with breakout actress Sadie Scheufler in the Amanda Seyfried role of “Needy” Lesnicki. Beer seduces a hapless jock from the middle of a basketball court, staring him out as he watches her, entranced, from the bleachers. The hypnotically rhymed verses sound harmless enough “Step inside my mind / You can see the shrine /Got you on my walls/ Believe it”. Yet the video descends into bloodshed when Beer’s Jennifer Check seduces the jock in the school locker room – a seduction aided by her Needy sidekick and with gory consequences for her victim.

The lyrics now sound far less innocent: “I wanna feel the rush / I wanna taste the crush / I wanna feel / I wanna lay you down / I wanna string you out / I wanna make you mine”. The sexual chemistry isn’t between Jennifer and the Jock. It’s between Jennifer and Needy who eventually seduce each other on a strobe-lit dance floor. 

Madison Beer is definitely serving Megan Fox in the video. Fans on X have been all over the Jennifer’s Body references. The video for Make You Mine is now Beer’s fastest solo music video to reach 1 million views on YouTube in less than 24 hours. Beer and her codirector, music video editor Aerin Moreno, fill every scene with references to the original movie. Beer’s sexy struts and hair flicks recall Fox’s irresistible performance. Her on-screen chemistry with Needy recalls the sexual tension of the original movie. Even the locations – the high school locker room, the swimming pool – are tongue-in-cheek references that Jennifer’s Body fans won’t miss.

Yet Madison Beer’s Make You Mine is more than a music video. Beer’s video understands the queer gender politics of Jennifer’s Body. Although there are sexual overtones in the original, neither Megan Fox as Jennifer nor Amanda Seyfried as Needy are explicitly queer-coded. Beer throws the sly innuendo out the window and puts a spotlight on the two fabulously sexy women characters at the heart of the movie. Jennifer’s Body is a queer horror movie that shows its title character devouring the toxic, hyper-masculinity that often fuels high school romances before chewing it up and spitting it back out.

Beer echoes these edgy, queer vibes. In a stark role reversal, Beer puts queerness at the forefront of the video and relegates the male characters to disposable background characters. With Make You Mine, you can get your pop music fix whilst enjoying the gory horror vibes.

Make You Mine is also a tribute to Megan Fox’s performance. Her image is synonymous with her role in Jennifer’s Body, and rightly so. She’s brilliant in using and weaponizing her sex appeal for both horror and comedy. Fox builds a character that is both the stuff of teenage dreams and a subversive queer villain. After the Make You Mine video, check out Jennifer’s Body if you want to watch an iconic cult movie and enjoy some genuinely gruesome scares.