It's her post-Oscar comic-teen fright flick

The CENTRAL characters in her "Jennifer's Body" script are two classmates whose friendship dates back to slumber parties: Needy and Jennifer. Jennifer is a man-eater in both the literal and figurative sense. Needy has been resolutely faithful to her BFF, but changes course when Jennifer crosses to the dark side and decides that Needy's boyfriend, Chip, would make for a tasty piece of teen jerky. "I am directly influenced by girls I have known," Cody said. "Girls who treated life as a race, and if there was someone or something they wanted, they would stab you in the back. It's a movie about hunger. A lot of teenage girls are starving themselves and a lot of them are psychologically hungry, because they are so misunderstood."

Cody wrote "Jennifer's Body" after "Juno," but before the latter film was released theatrically last December. Producer Jason Reitman, who directed "Juno," and Fox Atomic, 20th Century Fox's since-downsized genre label, joined to buy the screenplay.

"I think the script flummoxes some people," Cody said. "It's a little weird, not what you're used to." In fact, she said, she's a little "worried" about how "Jennifer's Body" might be received. " 'Juno' is a life-affirming movie," Cody said over dinner, with filming wrapped for the day. "And this is a death-affirming movie. The people who really loved 'Juno' -- I don't know if they will love this in the same way. And the people who hated 'Juno' -- well, this will just be more grist for the mill."

While the film, set in rural Minnesota not far from where Cody once lived, tweaks the conventions of the killer-on-the-loose genre, it does so in Cody's familiar pop-culture-reference-laden style. When a poser devil-worshiping rock band named Low Shoulder decides to perform a human sacrifice, they rely on plans printed out from the Internet.

"Do you know how hard it is to make it as an indie band these days?" one of the group's members, Nikolai (Adam Brody), says as he prepares to follow the online slaying instructions. "There are so many of us and we're all so damned cute. If you don't get on 'Letterman' or some retarded soundtrack. . . . Satan is our only hope."

Kusama and Cody face an unusual challenge with "Jennifer's Body": While the film is populated with gorgeous women, they want to make sure the movie isn't lecherous. "That's something you have to grapple with when you are making a monster movie -- the girls have to look hot," said Cody, who describes herself as a radical feminist. "We didn't have to worry as much about ["Juno" star] Ellen Page's lip gloss" as how Seyfried and Fox look in this film.