John Fawcett’s Ginger Snaps starts out so well
that its terrible last half hour feels insulting. A teenage werewolf tale that
cleverly equates lycanthropy with menstruation, Snaps is a horror movie
that apparently has something to say.It’s
a shame that it basically shuts up well before the credits roll. The film is
adept enough during its set-up. Two sisters, Brigitte (Emily Perkins) and Ginger
(Katherine Isabelle), who are 15 and 16, respectively, but haven’t yet had
their first period, are established as their school’s outcasts. They have
little use for boys and detest their peers that do. They also have a severe Goth
streak contributing to their teenage alienation, and they create elaborate and
gory death-themed panoramas, which they photograph for school projects.
The two sisters are distinctive enough from each other that
they feel fully formed, and both of the roles are well acted. There’s a good
amount of pathos present here, even if the view of a teenage girl’s life
isn’t quite as perceptive as that of My First Mister or Ghost World. The portrayal
of their mother, courtesy of Mimi Rogers, makes you understand how they can
perceive the dawning of their womanhood to be a curse. After a truly scary scene
in which a werewolf attacks the girls, the picture settles into an effective
grove as they move about surreptitiously, trying to hide their bodies’
changes. For a good portion of the film, the synthesis of the terror and the
movie’s driving metaphor feels complete.
It’s only in the final act of the film (set predictably
on Halloween) that things begin to feel unoriginal and strained. The cleverness
of the concept runs off with its tail between its legs, as Ginger Snaps
becomes a much more rote genre exercise. The movie, which really focused solely
on the two sisters, transforms into a fairly standard, fairly gory slasher
flick. The lack of a strong supporting cast becomes hugely detrimental here,
since the wolf fodder feels more like a faceless body count than any sort of
people. This is a huge disappointment, and seems to reinforce the widely held
notion that horror films are generally unimaginative and concerned less with
character than dismemberment. Still, this is one of the better horror films to
come out lately, and its inability to get proper distribution in the United
States is rather disheartening, though that may have had more to do with a
post-Columbine terror toward any films that suggest kids can kill or die than
the quality of the film itself.
John Fawcett’s Ginger Snaps starts out so well
that its terrible last half hour feels insulting. A teenage werewolf tale that
cleverly equates lycanthropy with menstruation, Snaps is a horror movie
that apparently has something to say.
The two sisters are distinctive enough from each other that
they feel fully formed, and both of the roles are well acted. There’s a good
amount of pathos present here, even if the view of a teenage girl’s life
isn’t quite as perceptive as that of My First Mister or Ghost World
It’s only in the final act of the film (set predictably
on Halloween) that things begin to feel unoriginal and strained. The cleverness
of the concept runs off with its tail between its legs, as Ginger Snaps
becomes a much more rote genre exercise. The movie, which really focused solely
on the two sisters, transforms into a fairly standard, fairly gory slasher
flick. The lack of a strong supporting cast becomes hugely detrimental here,
since the wolf fodder feels more like a faceless body count than any sort of
people. This is a huge disappointment, and seems to reinforce the widely held
notion that horror films are generally unimaginative and concerned less with
character than dismemberment. Still, this is one of the better horror films to
come out lately, and its inability to get proper distribution in the United
States is rather disheartening, though that may have had more to do with a
post-Columbine terror toward any films that suggest kids can kill or die than
the quality of the film itself.