Ginger Snaps (2000)

 

Director: John Fawcett

Screenplay: Karen Walton

Cast: Emily Perkins as Brigitte Fitzgerald; Katharine Isabelle as Ginger Fitzgerald; Kris Lemche as Sam; Mimi Rogers as Pamela Fitzgerald; Jesse Moss as Jason McCardy; Danielle Hampton as Trina Sinclair; John Bourgeois as Henry Fitzgerald; Peter Keleghan as Mr. Wayne

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

Fuck! Wrists are for girls!

If we are to bring up a horror film in need of a greater level of attention towards it, least more readily, than Ginger Snaps is in a place where barring an old barebones DVD from the early 2000s on the cusp of laser rot, it is a film which has not come to the United Kingdom with the cult reputation it deserves. A Canadian werewolf film, it came in my adolescent, growing up at the time into the early 2000s, off the crest of a lot of teen horror films post-Scream (1996), not all slashers, which surfed among the pop culture of the time, the teen dramas to the nu metal. Opening with fake suicide photography, Ginger Snaps possesses a sick sense of humour which contrasts others from the period as we are introduced to the Fitzgerald sisters Bridgett (Emily Perkins) and Ginger (Katharine Isabelle), having staged these mock deaths at their family home to the horror of their classmates. Immediately we are introduced to our outsider leads, and also one of Ginger Snaps’ best virtues, that among all the films from the time which will bring fuzzy nostalgia to my generation growing up at the time, this was a film back then and still now that had something special in its centre. That, whilst directed by a male director John Fawcett, this was about women and written by Karen Walton, working together with Fawcett in the premise of metamorphosis by way of lycanthropy. The metaphor is incredibly obvious – puberty through a werewolf metaphor, which can go as far back to I Was a Teenage Werewolf (1957) – but here for female characters, dealing with the subject from women, this lack of subtlety is for the better as the subject is given a fully developed interpretation.

Set up with the Beast of Bailey Downs, a mysterious animal savaging the locals’ dogs, this offers a great insight to how to use figures synonymous to folklore and especially those who would be absorbed into the Universal horror cannon like the werewolf. As mentioned I Was a Teenage Werewolf, that American International Pictures film produced by Herman Cohen, whilst a b-movies was marked in how it was about a restless and alienated male teen being awoken with violent outburst and growing hair, more so as that was made to sell to the new audience called a “teenager” in the first place. Befittingly this granddaughter takes this far further, and even when humorously, it emotionally stays focused on what it is. It manages to use even the over-the-top looking werewolf design and a surprising amount of practical gore effects than most teen horror films from the time to its advantage, all in being about two teen girls growing up and the emotional turmoil that involves.

Namely that, Ginger is nearly sixteen and finally goes through the menstruation very late but suddenly, the metaphor not being subtle that she will literally grow hair all over when she is attacked by the Beast of Bailey Downs. Even if that creature is no longer a problem by way of van, she will become a lycanthrope and change, all in mind that the Fitzgerald sisters, deeply close to each other as siblings, will drift apart. The description by the school nurse of menstruation you hear in one scene causes one, as a cis-male viewer, to realize how men have a complete area of existence they have no idea how to compose of in terms of the emotional and physical experience that a cis-female viewer might. It is all in mind that the lack of representation, even separation, of topics as simple as tampons have not been depicted as matter of fact in a lot of mainstream cinema. Puberty hits like a ton of bricks for boys, as I can attest too, but it is prominent that, least when it comes to popular culture, there has been rarely been seen in entertainment explicit conversation about female characters even having to buy tampons let alone many things women have in real life to consider with their bodies. Ginger Snaps would have been a film, abruptly in the horror genre, bothering to discuss this even with a lot of humour and irony¹.

The metaphor is broad here, but in the film’s sincerity and its dark humour, it is full of layers. It helps immediately that the leads are sympathetic, and the cast is full of great performances. Katharine Isabelle as Ginger established herself a small cult legacy between this and American Mary (2012) a time afterwards, but the cast is strong, including Emily Perkins as Brigitte, and Mimi Rogers as their mother Pamela, also worthy of praise as a character who is awesome, someone who as the narrative goes on becomes more and more sympathetic. She will stand behind her daughters even at the point when one body has to be hidden, the character taking an unexpected decision in mind to this is an emotional sucker punch. If there is a sense this cast, and those working behind the camera, feel for me not as widely known as I wish they were, it is because they worked in areas like television as much as cinema where I have less knowledge of, also in mind that, sadly, despite being an English speaking country as much as a French speaking on depending on the region, Canadian cinema is not as wildly available as one would hope.

Ginger Snaps has aged well in terms of the era and even as a werewolf film. Barring some techno in the soundtrack, and some diegetic (and non- diegetic) use of nu metal, enough to fill a soundtrack CD with the likes of Fear Factory and Soulfly on it, it does not follow a lot of horror films from the late nineties to early 2000s in stylistic choices. In fact, the lack of a heightened world onscreen, set in the fictional suburban town of Bailey Downs, which does not hide being in Canada, really helps the film greatly, as this feels like it exists in a real environment in its “cold” naturalistic appearance. The werewolf tropes are also undercut. You do not turn into a wolf on the full moon, instead the cause of a biological illness, left permanently like a wolf unless cured with monksbane, which ends up being used by injection. In does have a post-Scream (1996) sense of humour, poking fun at the tropes and with a sardonic tone to the dialogue especially when it comes to the violence, but alongside how bloody the film actually is, with a lot of practical effects, it also has a far more caustic script from Karen Walton for a horror film from this period, just from the amount of times “fuck” appears in dialogue.  

The absurdity of the events even has a whimsy at times, befitting its wrapping into the metaphor of adulthood, such as having to tap one’s developing tail to the leg for gym class. The metaphor for growing up into an adult, from a woman’s perspective, is helped a lot by this morbid humour, the Fitzgerald sisters played as naïve miscreants whose view of the world, and quick wit, makes the time it becomes serious more effective, especially as part of the metaphor is how Ginger no longer is the outsider but the figure growing in attention from the boys. Young men do not come off well in the film, baring a drug dealer/pot grower Sam (Kris Lemche), who is eventually helping Bridgett with trying to find practical solutions to the lycanthropy through real world homeopathy, such as silver not being used to shot werewolves but in belief if purified the blood. This gets into the hypocrisies of “slut shaming” and sexual conquests being viewed as only allowed for young men, something which backfires here in power structure and an STD metaphor as, with one guy eyeing up Ginger and the danger (expressed aloud) he will just talk of his sexual conquest of her, she is the dominant one and he has the bloody marks appearing on his trousers as the actor plays him off eventually as a comically sleazy fool.

The film was enough of a success that this had sequels, something which obviously raises concerns as, truthfully, the ending in its bittersweet conclusion closes the book logically on the tale, the sequels including one direct tale but the other a prequel set as a western. It is a film which, looking at the start of the Millennium, among those crossing the decades into the newest, really was a good one to come from this period, one I grew up with and has grown beyond being a nostalgic film to return to, but with huge virtues that grow the many times I have seen it.

 

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1) For another great example which has lasted for me, not in horror cinema, I think of Pink (1989), a manga by female author Kyoko Okazaki published in English. As a work with absurdist touches including the female lead having a pet crocodile, it also has a scene which has lingered for me of the female lead, in front of a man she is romantically connected in, placing in a tampon whilst letting him watch affectionately. It is a frank and sweet nod to this universal aspect of a cis-woman’s life which was, read in a release published in the 2010s, still transgressive and incredible to see from a work from 1989 in the West for me.