This entry is much later than most of the underrated horror films that I write about, since it's not even 20 years old yet, having come out in 2000. Although it got good reviews, it suffered from a lack of a wide, or even a medium release, both in its native Canada and elsewhere. Therefore, it only became even a cult film from being shown on HBO, and on video/DVD. Although it did get 2 more movies in the series (one a sequel, the other a prequel), I still don't think it has received the acclaim it deserves. So here we are. As usual, I'll start with a brief, spoiler-free synopsis, then a long, spoiler-rich recap, followed by a discussion of some of the movie's themes and strong points, and conclude with some cast and crew information.
Something's amiss in the Ontario suburb of Bailey Downs. Pet dogs are being killed in grisly fashion, by an unknown assassin. Meanwhile, the Fitzgerald sisters, Ginger and Brigitte, are going about their lives as teen outcasts, obsessed with death. One night Ginger is attacked by some strange creature. She begins to change, in physical, emotional, and behavioral ways. Brigitte desperately searches for an answer to the growing problem, aided by the local pot dealer, Sam. More carnage ensues, with no end in sight. Who or what is Ginger becoming, and can she be stopped?
(SPOILERS AHEAD UNTIL MARKED) "Ginger Snaps" opens in Bailey Downs, a Canadian suburb. A kid playing in a sandbox finds a severed, bloody dog's paw. His mother then discovers the rest of the gory remains of their pet dog. The audience then meets the Fitzgerald sisters. Both Brigitte and Ginger are 15, although Ginger is 10-11 months older than Brigitte. The girls are very close, weird, and outcasts from their peers and community. They're obsessed with death and suicide, and have a pact to either leave home, or kill themselves, by age 16. Their class project is spectacularly morbid and inappropriate, as it consists of pictures of each girl in a number of faked death poses. Some of these include one of them run over by a car, impaled on a fence, or dead by hanging. Later we see Trina, a popular girl, and a fellow student in their gym class. She knocks Brigitte down, and into a dog's corpse, which earns her a warning from Ginger. The local pot dealer, Sam, drops by in his van, much to the student's delight, especially a crush-stricken Trina.
Back at the Fitzgerald home, the family is eating dinner. The girls are sullen and quiet, and their father is similarly silent and apparently disconnected. Their mother, Pam, is struck by Ginger's reported lower back pain. She speculates that Ginger might be getting her first period, for which both girls are very late in starting. The girls go to Trina's house that night, looking to get her back with a prank. However, before they can Ginger is brutally attacked by a weird, dog-like creature. Both Brigitte and Ginger narrowly escape when the monster is run over by Sam's van. Back at home Brigitte wants to call for medical help, but Ginger convinces her not to, saying that she's already feeling better. Indeed the wounds on her body are already healing. As it turns out, Pam was right--Ginger has started her period. Uncharacteristically Ginger agrees to smoke pot with Jason and his friends. Trina's dog also reacts violently upon encountering Ginger. Ginger calls her sister's attention to weird whitish hairs which have recently sprouted from the healed up claw marks on her shoulder.
Brigitte is by now alarmed, and begins reading up on menstruation and werewolves. Ginger dismisses Brigitte's fears, pointing out that the creature was killed by a van, and not a traditional werewolf bane like a silver bullet. Ginger starts to become popular, and noticed by boys, which she seems to like. This also leads to an estrangement from her sister, formerly her only friend. Ginger even goes so far as to start dating Jason. At this point Sam approaches Brigitte. He found her picture of the attacking creature, and is similarly puzzled and worried about what it was. After discovering that Ginger is growing a tail Brigitte goes to visit Sam at his greenhouse, and comes clean about all she knows, although she lies and pretends that she was the one bitten. They discuss the situation as a biological disease, and Sam suggests a silver ring piercing might help, as it supposedly purifies the blood.
Ginger has violent sex with Jason, during which she also bites him. On the same night she attacks and partially consumes a neighbor's dog. She finally admits to Brigitte that something is very wrong, and consents to the silver ring as a belly button piercing. Her teeth and tail continue to grow. Jason is also looking ragged, and exhibiting symptoms. Ginger then beats up Trina when Trina once again plays rough with Brigitte during field hockey. During another meeting Sam suggests that monk's hood might help treat Ginger, but unfortunately the plant is out of season. Trina goes to the Fitzgerald house to confront Brigitte, as she's jealous of Brigitte hanging out with Sam. Ginger is also vocally suspicious of Sam. But Ginger drags Trina into their house, and threatens her. Trina slips on some split milk and hits her head on a counter, hard enough to kill her. The girls narrowly avoid their parents finding out about Trina's death by pretending the blood is another faked death scene, and then they bury Trina's body underneath their play house/shed. They make plans to flee soon.
Jason confronts Brigitte, as his symptoms are getting worse. The girl's mother is suspicious as well. Ginger continues to decline, suffering from intense desires to kill and rip apart living things. Brigitte traps Ginger in their bathroom, to prevent her from getting out and hurting anyone. She goes to visit Sam again, bringing some dried monk's hood plants she's stolen from her mother. They fill up a hypodermic needle with a solution to give to Ginger. Alas, before Brigitte reaches home she comes upon Jason accosting a child. She is barely able to stop him by injecting him with the monk's hood solution. It seems to have a dramatically positive effect. Ginger by this time has escaped the bathroom, and heads for school. During a confrontation she kills the guidance counselor, and then, later, the janitor. Simultaneously, Trina's accidentally dropped severed fingers lead Pam to discover the girl's buried body. Brigitte reaches the school, and is appalled by Ginger's murders. She rejects her sister, and so Ginger leaves in a rage, more wolf-like than ever by now. However, no one's the wiser, as she goes to the Halloween party at Sam's greenhouse. Pam picks up Brigitte on the road, and reveals that she knows about Trina. She suggests that they burn the family house down, and all flee together, without their father.
At the greenhouse Ginger confronts Sam, and roughly tries to seduce him. Brigitte bursts in, and to placate Ginger she deliberately infects herself by sharing blood with Ginger via cuts on their hands. Sam drives Brigitte and Ginger to their house, after knocking out Ginger with a shovel. At their house Ginger is conscious, and fully a wolf. She runs amok in the house. Sam and Brigitte prepare another monk's hood injection while hiding in the pantry. Before he can give it to her Ginger drags him out, and wounds him. Brigitte attempts to join her sister in feeding on Sam's blood, but she vomits, and can't. Ginger then kills Sam, and attacks her sister. Brigitte manages to fatally stab Ginger with a knife. As she dies Brigitte holds her, and sobs.
One of the major points about "Ginger Snaps" is how feminist, and female-centric the movie is. It starts with the two main characters, Brigitte and Ginger. Teenage girls aren't rare in horror movies, of course (there's a common trope in slasher movies, especially, of the "final girl," who's the ultimate survivor of the killer), but it is rare for male characters to be so absent, or at least largely unseen and inconsequential. The movie is unquestionably Brigitte and Ginger's, as it focuses most on their lives, points of view, and opinions. There's a test called the Bechdel Test for movies, to determine if female characters are fully realized and developed. Three important qualifiers are that there are at least 2 female characters in the movie (with names), there are conversations between female characters, and that these conversations don't only revolve around male characters. "Ginger Snaps" certainly passes this test. The female-centric idea can also be seen in the Fitzgerald family dynamic. Their mother Pam completely dominates the household. Their father, Henry, is nearly mute, and seemingly disconnected and disinterested. Similarly, the other male characters are mostly underwritten, rarely seen, and not that important to the plot. The male teachers and administrators at school seem well meaning, but blundering. Jason is dumb, and is mainly a sex object. Only Sam is rendered as being smart and competent, but even he ultimately is not able to help much. These points are not a criticism of the movie, at all. I find this to be a refreshing change. It was neat to view a movie from a different point of view than I'm used to, in which female characters are the overwhelming focus, and who, for better and worse, drive the action of the story.
The relationship between Brigitte and Ginger is an interesting one, too. Throughout most of the movie the girls are separated from their peers, their parents, and the entire community. Each only has a real relationship with the other, with two brief exceptions (Ginger's fling with Jason, and Brigitte's short problem-solving partnership with Sam). The movie can even be interpreted as a doomed love story of sorts--the sisters have a platonic, but still incredibly intimate relationship with each other, and only each other. "Together forever" as their pact goes. So when Ginger first rejects Brigitte, and then, later, when Brigitte rejects Ginger in her werewolf state, it's a weird, but tragic breakup. Brigitte's grief when Ginger dies is deeply sad--she's lost the only person that she truly cares about. It's doubly poignant because she did the killing, albeit in self-defense. But there's something else, too. Their relationship is decidedly one-sided at first--Ginger is clearly in charge, and Brigitte is in the subservient role. As the film progresses, though, this changes. Brigitte steps up. She researches about werewolves, consults with Sam to find treatments/cures, helps to hide Ginger's physical changes, efficiently manipulates her mother and the school, and attempts to reign in Ginger from hurting and killing people. So, in some ways, the tragic events of the movie were good for Brigitte, as she matured, and stepped out of her sister's shadow.
Another major theme was the linking of the symptoms of being a werewolf with those of puberty, and especially the menstrual cycle. There's a funny scene when the girls discuss Ginger's lycanthropy symptoms with a school nurse, and she confirms that they conform to those caused by menstruation--pain, feelings of aggression and anger, increased senses, hair growth, blood, etc. Initially Brigitte thinks that the common lore of werewolves transforming during a full moon is true, but later she realizes that it's really connected to Ginger's menstrual cycle instead. The fact that her cycle and the lunar cycle are in tandem is just a coincidence. Some of Ginger's changes are related to overall puberty as well. Puberty, after all, is a profound, and sometimes scary time for us all, as our bodies, emotions, and personality change drastically, in ways that are often confusing. Comparing these natural changes to turning into a monster might seem obvious, but in doing so it's very relatable, effective, and entertaining.
Ginger's sexuality is also explained in a interesting way. Before she's bitten, she appears to have little to no interest in sex, or at least, no interest in the potential partners available in Bailey Downs. But after going through both the changes of menstruation and becoming a werewolf, this changes dramatically. She abandons her sister, and accepts the advances of Jason, someone she regarded with complete disdain previously. And when she has sex, the gender roles are subverted from the usual teen sex cinematic event. Ginger is the initiator, and is quite aggressive and rough, even to the point of literally biting him during it. Later she roughly grabs a kiss from one of Jason's friends, randomly, and then basically attempts to rape Sam. She goes from "owning" her own sexuality to the extreme of becoming a sexual predator (as well as a literal predator!) Once again, a creative subversion of the usual teen, and horror movie. The screenwriter, Karen Walton, took the common trope of fear of female sexuality and exaggerated it in a darkly humorous way. Jason's genital bleeding was a further twist on the "norm." He was forced into the stereotypical female role during copulation, and then Ginger's bite turned him in a "menstruating" man to boot!
Ginger's lycanthropy has another benefit, too. As Ginger changes, it's not only her appearance, and attractiveness that improve. She becomes more noticed, more popular. Becoming a beast means her reputation with her peers is better. And although at the start of the film Ginger would have claimed not to care about such things, she obviously was lying, or at least changed her mind, since at the end she yells about refusing to go back to being a nobody. Becoming a werewolf had some short term benefits, including a gain in confidence, which resulted in a bump in her social status. But, of course, there was a terrible price to pay for these improvements--namely, several bloody murders.
Another thing I liked about "Ginger Snaps" was the lack of a love interest for Brigitte. Most movies would have had Brigitte and Sam start a romance. Trina and Ginger themselves suspected Sam's intentions, much to their downfalls. But that didn't appear to be true. Instead, the relationship between the two seemed platonic and respectful. It was just two people trying to solve a bizarre problem. A friendship born out of practicality, not of burgeoning hormones.
Lycanthropy, like most monsters of fiction, is of course a ridiculous concept, when you break it down. What I appreciated about "Ginger Snaps" were its efforts to make this idea somewhat plausible and realistic, by making it a biological disease. I liked how Walton came up with a quasi-scientific explanation for why silver and monk's hood (a relative of wolf's bane) would treat/cure a werewolf. The traditional werewolf, with its gothic trappings, is fun too, but a bit overdone. By setting the movie in a modern suburb, with "real" scientific reasons for the werewolves' existences, it made it more realistic, and atypically interesting. The more gradual transformation of Ginger (until the very end, obviously) was a cool difference as well. Seeing her grow a little bit of hair, slightly longer teeth, and a tail, accompanied by an increase in aggression, seemed more plausible, in a way. And, most importantly, this was new, and not something seen in dozens of werewolf movies over the decades. (Another noticeable change from most werewolf stories was that when werewolves died they didn't revert to human form.)
Something which also stood out to me in my most recent viewing was the character of Pam, the girl's mother. She's overbearing, dorky, oblivious, and kind of annoying, it's true. However, with all these admitted faults, she's still a much better parent than her husband Henry. Unlike him, she clearly loves her daughters, and cares deeply about their well being. Her main fault seems to be that she cares too much, in that at the end of the movie she's willing to tolerate her daughter's (apparent) murder of a classmate. Mimi Rogers' portrayal of Pam was winning to me. I find Pam very sympathetic. She's like a typical mom--misunderstood and unappreciated by her teenage children, who has her shortcomings, but is ultimately trying her best.
On a more practical level, I thought the movie had significantly better acting than in a typical low budget horror movie. I already mentioned Mimi Rogers, but Emily Perkins (Brigitte) and Katharine Isabelle (Ginger) were also very good. And since they have by far the most screen time, that was very key to the film's success. Furthermore, the special effects were done well, overall. There were many scenes with torn and eviscerated bodies, and these were suitably disgusting and convincing. Ginger's gradual physical changes were similarly effective, and realistic-looking. Some of the scenes of the fully transformed Ginger at the end were admittedly a little hokey. But it's a minor complaint--the filmmakers wisely kept the beast hidden much of the time, seen only in quick glimpses, and partially hidden by objects or shadows, etc. The effects are all especially laudable given the crew's relative lack of experience, and working with such a low budget.
(END OF SPOILERS--SAFE FOR EVERYONE) Most of the folks involved with "Ginger Snaps" haven't become major Hollywood stars or anything. Director John Fawcett did "The Boys Club" (1997), "The Dark" (2005), and has worked fairly steadily in Canadian television. Similarly, screenwriter Karen Walter also has been busy writing and producing mostly Canadian television work. Emily Perkins (Brigitte) is probably best known for appearing in the television series "It" (1990), as well as "Prozac Nation" (2001), "Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed" (2004), "Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning" (2004), and "Juno" (2007). Katharine Isabelle was in such films as "Insomnia" (2002), "Freddy vs. Jason" (2003), both "Ginger Snaps" sequels, "American Mary" (2012), and "Bad Times at El Royale" (2018). Sam portrayer Kris Lemche was in such movies as "eXistenZ" (1999), "My Little Eye" (2002), "Final Destination 3" (2006), and "In Time" (2011). Aside from having been married to Tom Cruise, Mimi Rogers (Pam) is probably best known for "Gung Ho" (1986), "The Doors" (1991), "Lost in Space" (1998), and television's "The X Files" (1998-99). Probably the most famous person in the cast didn't even appear on screen (she was the voice for the PA system at the school). Lucy Lawless was this voice, and she's known for roles (some starring) in several television series, including "Xena: Warrior Princess" (1995-2001), "Battlestar Galactica" (2005-09), "Parks and Recreation" (2012-15), and "Ash vs. Evil Dead" (2015-18). And if you're a fan of Hong Kong and Taiwan cinema you might recognize the man who played the janitor, Pak-Kwong Ho. His IMDB page lists over 300 credits.
Therefore, I heartily recommend "Ginger Snaps." Its' a creative, different, interesting take on the werewolf legend, with compelling characters, a well-written script, good direction, solid special effects, and good production values across the board. I put it right up there with the best of the werewolf movies ever, which includes "The Howling" (1981), "An American Werewolf in London" (1981), and "Dog Soldiers" (2002). (I also think that 1994's "Wolf," "The Wolf Man" (1941), "The Company of Wolves" (1984), and "Wolfen" (1981) are all well worth watching. Moving on to the later movies, I did see "Ginger Snaps 2: Unleashed" (2004) once long ago. I recall thinking that it was okay, but not nearly as great as the original. I never watched the prequel, "Ginger Snaps Back: The Beginning" (2004), so I can't comment on it. When/if I locate these and check them out again, or for the first time, I'll add more information to this post.
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