Editor’s Note: This was originally published for FANGORIA on May 10, 2001, and we’re proud to share it as part of The Gingold Files.
It has become a sad, familiar refrain: How is it that a scary, intelligent teen horror film like Ginger Snaps can’t make it to major U.S. release, while dross like Urban Legends: Final Cut, Valentine and The Forsaken makes it into theaters nationwide? In this case, it is at least understandable, if lamentable, that the studios would be averse to handling Ginger Snaps. Not only is it drenched in blood and the rawest language heard in a youth film since Heathers, it also deals frankly with adolescent female sexuality, a subject the majors have never been comfortable with. Not to mention that (speaking of Heathers) it spotlights two sisters who rehearse their own suicides, and not all the bleeding is done by the victims. Menstruation is a key subject here, and it’s easy to imagine studio heads reacting the way the young protagonists’ father does when the topic comes up at the dinner table: Lowering his eyes, he just doesn’t want to hear about it.
All this could have come off as exploitative and off-putting, were it not for the film’s smart writing, astute direction, keen use of dark humor and superb performances. Ginger Snaps is easily one of the two best independent horror films made in North America in the last few years (the other is Larry Fessenden’s Wendigo), and gives renewed hope for the genre, even as it continues to face trouble in the marketplace.
On the surface, Ginger Snaps might seem like another story of a socially abused adolescent girl who strikes back through supernatural means, but nothing in Karen Walton’s script is that simple. Ginger (Katherine Isabelle) is the more attractive of the two Fitzgerald sisters, but both are outcasts at their high school and she is fiercely protective of the slightly younger Brigitte (Emily Perkins). It is one of Walton and director John Fawcett’s many smart grace notes that the two are outsiders by choice, rejecting the high school culture that forces kids in general and girls in particular into narrowly defined roles.
Walton also draws a parallel between the woman Ginger is becoming and the monster she begins to transform into after she and Brigitte are attacked by a hairy predator during a late-night walk in the woods. Getting her first period (a few years later than her peers, and coinciding with a full moon) is traumatic enough, but after the assault, Ginger finds herself sprouting hair in places where she shouldn’t, growing teeth and nails that are sharper than normal and even developing a vestigial tail. Meanwhile, she’s suddenly gaining a new, almost predatory interest in the very boys she once disdained and who once disdained her. Is this the woman in Ginger coming out, or the animal? As presented by Fawcett and Walton, it’s likely a little of both.
Throughout the film, the director and writer avoid the easy clichés of teen creature features, tying the fear of pubescent bodily changes to that of monstrous transformation in a manner worthy of fellow Canadian David Cronenberg. Ginger Snaps is not just a metaphor piece, however; it more than delivers the goods as a horror story, as Fawcett demonstrates a sure hand at building suspense and paying it off with shocking setpieces. He also knows just how to pitch the many humorous moments without breaking the tension, and making them of a piece with the overall tone. Of great assist are Thom Best’s photography, which is dark and gritty without looking cheap; Michael Shields’ fine, evocative score; and the excellent makeup FX by Paul Jones, which are sometimes effective for being so subtle (in the case of Ginger’s slowly sharpening teeth and nails) that the other characters don’t seem to notice them.
Finally, the movie succeeds as well as it does because of the two lead actresses, who are both superb. Isabelle and Perkins are convincing from frame one as sisters who have clung to each other all their lives, and as outcasts who need their shared strength to navigate the hells of adolescence. Isabelle compellingly embodies Ginger’s evolving strength and confidence, broken by bursts of panic and despair about what is happening to her. As boys and other new hungers come to distract Ginger, she begins to neglect and eventually turn on Brigitte, whose pain–and resolve to help her sister–are movingly enacted by Perkins. The onscreen bond between the characters is so strong that it holds right up until and during the finale, when Isabelle is replaced with Jones’ animatronic werewolf.
It just occurred to me that that’s the first time I’ve used the word “werewolf” in this review, which is appropriate, because Ginger Snaps covers much more ambitious territory than the usual lycanthropicture. Yet Fawcett and Walton never condescend to the genre or pretend they’re not making a horror film; it’s full-blooded (in every sense of the word) and honors the genre’s traditions even as it slants them to new dramatic ends.
Ginger Snaps opened theatrically May 11 in Canada, where the subject matter is evidently not a concern—the advertising tagline is “They don’t call it the curse for nothing”! Following a few festival appearances, the movie will be released on video in the U.S. on October 23 by Artisan, which is said to also be planning some limited theatrical play. While Ginger Snaps would get a major saturation release in a perfect world, it’s the kind of movie that can transcend whatever medium it plays in—for it’s the personal elements, not visual dazzle, that make the film special.
