Sexy/funny horror flick Jennifer's Body premiered at a Midnight Madness screening last night to a sold-out crowd that had no problem with staying up late to express their enthusiasm for the film and to engage its cast and crew in a Q & A session well into the early morning.

Starring the ethereal Megan Fox, up-and-comer Amanda Seyfried (also starring in Atom Egoyan's Chloe, another official TIFF selection) and written by Juno screenwriter Diablo Cody, it's no wonder the film was generating buzz even before the festival opened.

But it's more than just star power that makes the film so tantalizing. Body is the brainchild of two real horror buffs, meaning that the film is treated not only as a loving homage to the genre, but was given an infusion of everything that two kickass femmes thought the genre was lacking.

For Karyn Kusama, the movie's director, horror films were a childhood passion.

"I look back on a lot of them fondly," she said.

"And I think that they have a lot to do with growing up and how you find a repository for all of your childhood anxieties. So it was a natural fit for me, but I was really lucky that it came in front of me."

For Cody, horror flicks were similarly worshipped, but off-limits, only adding to their sex appeal.

"I've loved horror films my entire life, but when I was a kid I was restricted from watching them, most of the time, which made that section of the video store all the more tantalizing," she said.

"So now to be able to make a horror film is very delicious; it's nice."

Jennifer's Body is certainly not lacking in sex appeal itself. But unlike other films within the genre, which tend to treat sex as the inciting incident to violence (Halloween's (1978) Michael Myers killed his sister after she engaged in sexual acts with her boyfriend and in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre remake (2003) it's the celibate Erin who is the only survivor), writer and director had a softer approach to budding sexuality.

"It's very easy to get away with a very negative depiction of sexuality, as though sexuality itself is the horror," Kusama explained.

"The seductions and the sexuality that Jennifer projects does have this sort of carnivorous and consuming and negative impact, but on the other hand [Seyfried's character] Needy has this positive relationship with [her boyfriend] Chip that's open and awkward but very real and connected and engaged. Instead of the cliché of the genre, that a lot of meaningless sex, whatever meaningless really means, leads to murder, this was reversing a lot of those trends."

As far as the age-old union of horror and teenagers goes, Kusama says that they're both the perfect subjects and audience of the genre.

"Teenagers are in danger," she laughed.

"I mean, despite being teenagers, it's a naturally precipitous place to be, so horror movies in my opinion just speak to the terror that young people feel and can't articulate. And I also feel the visceral pleasure of movies from childhood on involves being afraid, wanting to laugh, wanting to cry, wanting to love. So to me this movie answers a lot of those adolescent needs, and beyond, I hope."

As far as the notable reversal of male assailant/female victim to femme fatale/unassuming male victims is concerned, Cody claims that, in her mind, a female villain was a natural choice.

"I think there's nothing scarier than a bitch!" she exclaimed, explaining that she was always outside the queen bee's social circle at school.

"So for me I think the bitch should take her place in the catalogue of classic horror characters: Dracula, Frankenstein and a bitchy, attractive woman."

Both Fox and Seyfried admitted that they can't tolerate horror films. When asked why, then, they would want to terrorize young girls like horror films terrorized them as children, Fox shot back, "why not scare the hell out of boys?"

Why not indeed.

Jennifer's Body will screen tomorrow at noon at the Ryerson Theatre and on Thursday, Sept. 17 at 08:30 pm at Varsity Cinemas.