Ginger snaps

Year of release : 2000

 

Run time : 1h44min

 

Genre : Horror / Supernatural Horror / Fantasy

 

Cast : Katharine Isabelle, Emily Perkins, Mimi Rogers

 

 

The movie was directed by John Fawcett and is based on a story he developed with Karen Walton, who also wrote the script.

Ginger and Brigitte are two sisters born one year apart from each other who are best friends. They don’t fit in in school,one of the reasons being they are unusual,as in, they are attracted to the dark side;for example,for their school project they took pictures of themselves as dead in scene of the crime scenarios,freaking the teacher out.

 

Ginger gets her period at 15 and on that very night,probably because she was bleeding,as they were out looking for a schoolmate’s dog,she is attacked by a creature after they just found out another eviscerated dog (the dogs in the neighbourhood were viciously attacked and killed for some time now by some mysterious creature).

 

The sisters were very close,had this amazing bond that not many siblings have-they talked about dying together,they were that morbid-,and once Ginger comes out of the attack she grows apart from her sister.

Ginger starts acting out-probably due to what she’s going through,the fear of changing into something she doesn’t understand and doesn’t know how to come back from- and this coincides with her getting her first period,coming into adulthood,which I think that this is what this movie is about, a twisted story about leaving childhood,changing into something one can’t come back from.

 

As Ginger explores her new self,-she starts dating the popular kid in school,does drugs (because of the excruciating period pains) with him, and has s3x with him-, her sister is trying to find out what bit her, what is happening to her and how to help her.

This is one of my favorite movies. 

The movie takes place during the course of a month in October until Halloween, during Ginger’s transformation.  SPOILERS  and she fully turns into a werewolf,unable to change back.END OF SPOILER

 

Throughout her transformation Ginger is driven by one single thought:her sister must be with her,like her. She wants to change her into what she is,because they said they were gonna die together. She lashes out because her sister doesn’t want to follow her into the darkness and k!lls people,becoming more of a beast.

Brigitte thinks Ginger was bitten by a werewolf as she is growing hair in the place where she was “scratched” by it, the wounds healing very fast, is growing a tail, her nails looking like an animal’s, even her teeth changing, and is losing way too much blood. Ginger also grows aggressive, and dogs bark at her a lot. Whenever Brigitte is trying to warn her about what might be happening to her Ginger just calls her jealous.

Brigitte gets a friend in the local dr@g dealer, Sam, who hit the thing while it was chasing them, and thinks it’s a werewolf too, Sam being the one who tells her how to beat the changing. But what if it’s too late, what if they waited for too long to administer the cure?

Their mother is ridiculous, always embarrassing Ginger in front of her father, talking about her getting her period more than once! She also has this ridiculous haircut. But I do like her, and feel sorry for her, because she really loves her daughters and wants to be close to them and part of their lives, while they’re always pushing her away.

I liked the beautiful autumn colors the movie had as a backdrop.

 

The acting was top notch.

I liked the soundtrack. It has this beautiful, sad, melancholy song at the beginning which is played out through the movie, like a foreshadowing of things to come. Speaking of foreshadowing, they do talk about infections eating the host from the inside and watch werewolves movies throughout.

The visual effects / prosthetics are great.

The movie received critical acclaim but was a box office failure. It did gather a cult following years later.

It has scores in the 70’s on Metacritic, and ranging between 78% and 90% on Rotten Tomatoes. IMDB’s score added up to 6.8.

The movie has a prequel “Ginger Snaps Back : The beginning”, and a sequel “Ginger Snaps 2 Unleashed“ both filmed back to back and released in 2004.

The movie was nominated for quite a few awards, and won half of them.

 

Rating : The Stuff Dreams Are Made Of!