“You and me against life as we know it.”
Ginger Snaps doesn’t prepare you for the kind of movie it is; nothing about it belies the melancholy and pathos beneath its performatively edgy exterior and regrettable pun of a title. John Fawcett’s film is a lot darker than one might expect (a lot gorier, too; consider this a content warning if dead dogs are a deal breaker), but it’s also got a lot on its mind. This is a werewolf film, and those have always been purple with opportunity for allegories about any kind of change. Ginger Snaps doesn’t buck that trend, but it does bring something new to the table. Much like Carrie, which this film owes a lot to, Ginger Snaps focuses on the sometimes terrifying process of growing up as a woman. Maybe it hit me harder as a male viewer, because the experiences depicted here are so unlike my own, but the point is pretty universal: puberty is horrifying.
The Fitzgerald sisters, Brigitte and Ginger, are obsessed with death. They spend their time planning how they’re going to honor their mutual suicide pact. When they’re not doing that, they’re staging elaborately visceral tableaus depicting their own demise. They are seldom apart from each other. Although separated by a year, they’re in the same grade. They sleep mere feet from each other in a bedroom that looks more like a bomb shelter. They interact with others reluctantly. If these two sound annoying, well, they kind of are – at first (think Wednesday Addams or Lydia Deetz pushed to a Hot Topic-clad extreme). But the performances by Emily Perkins (as Brigitte) and Katherine Isabelle (as Ginger) help save the film.
They live in a small suburb of Ontario called Bailey Downs, which is being terrorized by an unseen beast. The first scene – the first scene, remember – has a woman discovering her mutilated dog and shrieking, “It got our dog!” It’s an unpleasant way to start a movie, sure, but it also establishes the tone in the first few minutes. While the sisters are walking through a park at night, Ginger is attacked by the beast, a mangy, starving thing which drags her off into the woods, again and again. To the film’s credit, the beast has a unique design – all unnatural angles – and the attack is pretty harrowing. The beast continues pursuing them out of the park, where it’s struck by a van and is eviscerated.
It’s in this scene that Ginger Snaps lays bare its mission statement. Ginger starts menstruating for the first time, a few years late. Noting the blood on her leg, she moans, “I got the curse.” She’s attacked shortly thereafter. It’s not a subtle metaphor, but it works: this is how men treat girls the second they become women.
It’s also here that Ginger Snaps starts turning into a real horror movie and not just the splatter-fest it threatens to become. Ginger doesn’t transform whenever there’s a full moon; no, her transformation is gradual, and Fawcett’s use of body horror is almost Cronenbergian in its morbidity and glee. Credit is also due to the superb makeup effects by Paul Jones for his horrifying creations. Between Jones’ designs and Fawcett’s intrusive camera, it’s always squirm-inducing to see some new change in Ginger’s body: she starts growing a tail, her nails lengthen, her teeth become fanged, and she starts growing hair in places she shouldn’t (like I said, the puberty metaphor isn’t always a subtle one).
While Ginger is the title character, and Isabelle does a fine job in the role, it would be unwise to overlook Emily Perkins. As Brigitte, she is at first something of a nonentity (although she does have the goth girl stance down: baggy hoodie, stooped posture, one arm clutching the opposite bicep defensively). But as she works with local drug dealer/amateur cryptozoologist Sam (Kris Lemche, boring in every scene), she goes through a believable arc. Perkins’ performance goes from mousy to assured, and it’s a testament to her skill that none of these changes feel sudden. It’s not something you’d even note until the climax of the film, when the girl on screen is unrecognizable from the one we meet in the opening scenes.
At times, Ginger Snaps seems on the precipice of becoming a morality play; to wit, Ginger has unprotected sex with a guy and passes the curse on to him, which isn’t subtle even by this film’s standards. But when it lets itself get deep and introspective – while, yes, gory and gross – it stands out. As Ginger becomes more and more monstrous (impulsive, irritable, violent), she becomes more and more resistant to letting Brigitte help her. In that way, it’s a story about the distance that can grow between siblings, or between friends, when your interests don’t line up anymore. In the real world, these rifts tend to form gradually, but Brigitte has the uniquely horrific experience of seeing it happen every day. As over the top as Ginger Snaps gets in its violence, it never forgets that the Fitzgerald sisters are people.
There are some downsides to the film. There’s a pretty serious second-act lull, as well as an unnecessary subplot involving the girls’ mother finding a dead body in the shed and planning to burn down the house and escape with the girls. That dead body belongs to Trina, played by Danielle Hampton in the film’s broadest performance. She’s your standard teenage sociopath, seemingly modeled after any Stephen King character (think Buddy Repperton in Christine, or Henry Bowers in It). And while I don’t expect realism in supernatural films, Ginger Snaps still pushes it. This is one of those movie worlds where teens can bring their dog to school, or cut class to watch the girls play field hockey, or grow weed in the back of a county building.
But that’s not enough to write it off. Ginger Snaps is aware enough of genre conventions to defy them; for instance, in any other film, Sam and Brigitte’s relationship would turn romantic. But here, their age difference is acknowledged (she’s 15, he’s in his twenties), and while they care about each other, there’s no sexual tension to speak of. If anything, Sam comes off as almost a paternal figure. Since he’s sympathetic, and not a creep, when Ginger (in full wolf form now) slashes him to pieces, his death scene hits harder than one might expect.
In the end, the movie belongs to Brigitte. She has a syringe full of a cure that she and Sam had synthesized, and as she grapples with Ginger, trying to inject her, she screams, “I’m not dying in this room with you! I’m not dying!” The girl obsessed with death wants to live. More than an arc, this is another part of the teenage experience that Ginger Snaps taps into: the need for individuality. The process of discovering who you are. The revelation that you don’t need to like, or want, certain things just because your friends do.
It’s no surprise that this film has a cult following. It didn’t do well in theaters, but found a second life on home video, and managed to spawn a number of sequels. But that’s not, I don’t think, why people are drawn to it. There’s gore here, yes, and some humor, and some gratuitous shots of Ginger’s pantie-clad rear end. That’s enough to attract a B-movie crowd, and they won’t leave disappointed. But there’s more going on here. That’s all I want out of horror movies. I want to be scared, yes, but I also want more.
10/1: Hellraiser / The Invitation
10/2: Splice / Banshee Chapter
10/3: Jennifer’s Body / Raw
10/4: Dominion: Prequel to The Exorcist / Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2
10/5: Kill List / A Field in England
10/6: Halloween II / Halloween III: Season of the Witch
10/7: A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy’s Revenge / A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors
10/8: Ginger Snaps / Creep
10/9: Cube / Creep 2
10/10: The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2003) / The Ritual
10/11: Hell House LLC / The Taking of Deborah Logan
10/12: Re-Animator / From Beyond
10/13: Beetlejuice / Sleepy Hollow
10/14: Idle Hands / The Lords of Salem
10/15: The Ring / Noroi: The Curse
10/16: I Know What You Did Last Summer / The Monster
10/17: Night of the Living Dead / Train to Busan
10/18: The Devil’s Backbone / Southbound
10/19: Event Horizon / Dreamcatcher
10/20: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari / The Bad Seed
10/21: Eyes Without a Face / Goodnight Mommy
10/22: The Strangers / The Strangers: Prey at Night
10/23: In the Mouth of Madness / The Void
10/24: The Amityville Horror / Honeymoon
10/25: Gerald’s Game / Emelie
10/26: The Monster Squad / Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon
10/27: Veronica / Jacob’s Ladder
10/28: High Tension / You’re Next
10/29: The Innkeepers / Bug
10/30: The People Under the Stairs / Vampires
10/31: Saw / Saw II
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