Cast: Katharine Isabelle, Emily Perkins, and Mimi Rogers
Director: John Fawcett
108 minutes (18) 2000
Second Sight Blu-ray box-set
Rating: 9/10
Review by Steven Hampton
[Released 30th October]
The Howling meets Carrie with extra weirdness. Socially inept, desperately unhappy, and late starting menstruation, the Fitzgerald sisters, Ginger (Katharine Isabelle) and Brigitte (Emily Perkins), sulk their way through dreary schooldays, and worry throughout lonely nights. They can’t fit in, so they don’t even bother trying - preferring instead to stage an alarmingly proficient series of fake death scenes (their photo evidence of which makes up a compelling backdrop for the opening credits), as an appallingly ghoulish hobby to shock parents, teachers, and terrify neighbours. And, as a predictable side effect, winning them fleeting classroom kudos for dark-side cool.
While
the Goth girls are out at night plotting mischief, Ginger is bitten by a werewolf,
and has her first period. Following the accidental death of a girl from their
school, the sisters’ close relationship is threatened by Ginger’s animal
sexuality, Brigitte’s concern for her sibling’s hormonal trauma (interpreted by
the older girl as jealousy), and the frequent appearance of yet more blood.
Before the next full Moon, Brigitte realises she must find a cure for the
ferocity growing in Ginger, or many people will die. She gets help from a young
gardener, who suggests a herbal remedy for the girl’s lycanthrope disorder, but
even seemingly clueless mum, Pamela (Mimi Rogers), senses that for Ginger,
there’s no going back.
Among the details of this clever re-interpretation of werewolf lore there’s a focus on the growing of a dog tail, prior to the main transformation scene of infected teen into ginger-wolf. This permits a narrative that dwells on genre themes of gender roles and bestiality, and the sort of burgeoning sexual perversity evident in Schrader’s remake of Cat People (1982), with signifiers of what critic Barbara Creed has called ‘the monstrous feminine’. Not to mention indirect references to venereal disease (as when Ginger’s sexual partner is horrified to find blood in his urine), incurable cancer, and, the HIV virus. Every excuse for the lurid spilling of blood is fully explored until the body-horrors establish a narrative trajectory leading to poetic tragedy.
Despite
the red stuff that runs, drips, and splatters everywhere, Ginger Snaps (as its title hints) is a black-comedy flush with an understanding
of common teenage unease, misery, and stress. DIY body-piercing for Ginger to
get a navel ring, is a startling and exceedingly witty update of the usual
silver bullet cure for werewolf bites, and further demonstrates the high
standard of inventiveness here, for which director John Fawcett, screen-writer
Karen Walton, and the young stars, deserve much praise. Although this is
letdown during the climactic scenes, by a modest production budget, when clear
views of a wholly unconvincing monster’s attack introduce an unwelcome element
of pure cartoon over-extension to the action, Ginger Snaps is an excellent horror thriller, with proof of a brave
and lively intelligence at work beneath the visceral surface.
Ginger Snaps: Unleashed
Cast:
Emily Perkins, Tatiana Maslany, and Katherine Isabelle
Director: Brett Sullivan
94 minutes (18) 2004
Rating: 9/10
Review
by Debbie Moon
After the events of Ginger Snaps, surviving sister Brigitte is struggling to find a way to overcome her werewolf nature, while on the run from another of her kind. When she takes an overdose of her dangerous ‘cure’, Brigitte’s sent to a drug rehab project in an otherwise abandoned hospital. Teaming up with a pre-teen named Ghost, who’s obsessed with horror comics and soon works out what the new girl’s problem is, she has to escape before the change happens - or, indeed, her pursuer starts claiming innocent victims. But Brigitte may be in even more danger from an unexpected source...
This
fantastic sequel to a low-budget hit, Ginger
Snaps 2: Unleashed has all the twisted charms of the original - with genuine
shocks and thrills, a dry and disaffected wit, and a sharp eye for the horrors
of being a teenager. The hospital setting, a morass of teen bullies,
exploitative staff, and a well-meaning mother figure who just can’t accept the
real problem, puts a new slant on proceedings, and Megan Martin’s ingenious
script keeps up the tension and reserves some terrific shocks for the final
reel.
Emily
Perkins gives another gripping performance as the haunted Brigitte, fighting
for her life, but it’s no insult to her to observe that the breakout
performance is young Tatiana Maslany’s as Ghost, possibly the world’s most
disturbed pre-teen. Sharp, shocking and dryly amusing, Ginger Snaps 2 is that rare thing - a truly great horror sequel.
With another movie soon to follow, catch up while you can.
Ginger Snaps Back:
The Beginning
Cast: Katherine Isabelle, Emily Perkins, and Nathaniel Arcand
Director: Grant Harvey
91 minutes (18) 2004
Rating:
8/10
Review by Alasdair Stuart
Ginger Snaps is widely regarded as one of the best, and last, of the postmodern teen-horror subgenre made so famous by Kevin Williamson and Wes Craven’s Scream trilogy. Its blacker than black comedy, acerbic wit and fervent, almost manic bond between its main characters has garnered the film a legion of fans and two follow-ups, filmed back to back.
However,
Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning is
more of a prequel than a sequel and is a genuinely unusual direction to take this
franchise. For a start, it’s set in 18th century Canada at an outpost under
siege from a legion of werewolves. Brigitte and Ginger are also there, albeit
this time as the daughters of an explorer who drowned when their boat was
overturned. As the film begins, they’re alone, on horseback, in the middle of
nowhere. They’re cold, frightened and have no one to rely on but each other.
This neatly brings the incredibly close relationship between the two in the previous movies into a whole new light. Brigitte and Ginger are utterly co-dependent due to the terrible situation they find themselves in and as a result, they find themselves pushed into increasingly drastic courses of action. As the inhabitants of the fort turn on one another, and finally them, the sisters find that the only people they can rely on are each other.
This very close, and slightly disturbing, relationship is beautifully drawn and played by Katherine Isabelle and Emily Perkins. Isabelle is hugely impressive as the haunted, frantic young woman struggling to keep her sister alive and herself human whilst Perkins, given the quieter role, is if anything more unsettling. There’s fervour to this incarnation of Brigitte that gives every scene she has a real sense of tension. Whilst Ginger may be the physically more comfortable one, it’s Brigitte whose refusal to back down and absolute refusal to abandon her sister who is ultimately responsible for some of the film’s most disturbing moments.
With two performances of this strength at its centre, the rest of the film inevitably falls a little by the wayside. The inhabitants of the outpost are drawn for the most part from stock, whether the lecherous soldier played by J.R. Bourne, or Hugh Dillon’s fire-and-brimstone preacher. Only Tom McCamus’ Rowlands and Nathaniel Arcand’s Hunter are standouts. The first, the owner of the settlement, is a great character whose dark secret propels most of the film along. Superficially, he’s the traditional leader, a physically adept and resolutely fair man who in a simpler film would be the hero. Here though he’s far more than that, alternately an ally and enemy to the girls adding another element of chaos to an already unpredictable film. Arcand’s Hunter is much the same, one of the only people who seems able to come and go as he pleases and who never quite chooses a side. He truly comes into his own in the last 20 minutes, as does McCamus in fact, and their performances are at least as strong as the two female leads.
What
really impresses here though is the script. There’s an overwhelming sense of
doom to the whole affair as the girls’ actions echo those they took in the
earlier films. Even their love for one another becomes a dark, untrustworthy
thing, bringing as much pain down on them as it eases. Most importantly though,
the fact that the same actresses are playing earlier incarnations of the girls
drives home the central idea of inevitability beautifully, as well as tying
Ginger and Brigitte neatly into the history of the area.
All in all, Ginger Snaps Back is an intelligent, unusual and remarkably dark prequel. It maintains the same grim humour of the first film and expands on its themes in an unexpected and highly effective way. If only more horror trilogies were this good.
Extras:
GINGER SNAPS -
Commentary by Mary Beth McAndrews and Terry Mesnard
Commentary
with director John Fawcett
Commentary
with writer Karen Walton
Canadian Uncanny - Stacey Abbott on
Ginger Snaps
A Blood Red Moon - interview with John
Fawcett
What Are You
Wereing?
- interview with producer Steve Hoban
The Art Of Horror - interview with storyboard
artist Vincenzo Natali
Featurettes:
- Ginger Snaps: Blood, Teeth And Fur
- Growing Pains: Puberty in Horror Films
- The Making of Ginger Snaps
Cast
auditions and rehearsals
Deleted
scenes with optional director and writer commentaries
Production
design Work
Creation
of the Beast
Trailers and TV Spots
GINGER SNAPS UNLEASHED –
- Commentary with director Brett Sullivan
- Girl, Interrupted - interview with Brett Sullivan
- The Bloody Lunar Cycle - interview with writer Megan Martin
- Behind the scenes
- Deleted scenes with optional director’s commentary
- Audition tapes
- Storyboards
Commentary by director Grant Harvey
Snap!
- interview with Grant Harvey
Girls
on Film - interview with producer Paula Devonshire
The
Making of Ginger Snaps Back
Deleted
scenes with optional director’s commentary
Grant Harvey’s video diaries
